Once or twice a year, when I was a teenager, my father would take me into Manhattan for lunch with a group he belonged to, the Dutch Treat Club. On one of those occasions, in 1967, he made a point of introducing me to another of the members, a tall, thin man whose pinstripe suit and pencil mustache marked him as a visitor from a vanished world.
The man was Lowell Thomas, once among the most famous broadcasters in the world. In 1917, half a century earlier, Thomas had first set eyes on Colonel T. E. Lawrence, the British archaeologist turned warrior in flowing white robes who helped lead the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks. Thomas knew a story when he saw one. In articles, lectures, and newsreel footage, Thomas elevated the diminutive Englishman—he was only five foot three, with a laugh that could quickly become a giggle—into the towering Lawrence of Arabia.
