Books by William Bryant

According to the author: "This is not exactly a book about history, or about teaching and learning methodologies, or educational theory and practice, or museum operations, or politics or revolution or the future. It's about all of these things, and more, because it's a book about people . . . It is supposedly about my experiences as a museum tour guide, but is really about what more than six decades of studying history with a purpose have taught me.

The Al-Batin Diaries are the intimate record of a year spent by William Bryant in a remote military base in Saudi Arabia where he was assigned to produce basic medical texts for Saudi students. King Khaled Military City is a world without women populated by young Third World construction workers whose lives and desperate sexual practices are described in detail, along with those of Saudis and other Arabs. The journals are full of notes for the comic erotic novel that Bryant is writing at the same time, the text of which is included in the second part of the book.

Ross, parts of which appeared in Evergreen Review, is a created history based on the experiences of the mysterious Ross (T. E. Lawrence) in America, his relations with Billy, a street urchin, and Millicent Molloy, a famous Broadway actress.Billy, believing he has accidentally killed Ross during a session of flagellation, escapes by ship, pursued by a transvestite FBI agent (Herbert Hoover). He finally reaches Paris, where Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Picasso, Hemingway and other notorious intellectuals welcome him with open arms. Billy is kidnapped by Count Czerny, a Hungarian noble, and spirited away to his castle where Millicent Molloy is being kept in sexual thrall. In a bloody uprising the fates of Billy and Millicent hang in the balance while Ross, in true Lawrence of Arabia fashion, tries desperately to save them. Their lives intersect once more in a frenzied debacle.