Too Rich: The High Life and Tragic Death of King Farouk

Egypt's King Farouk (1920-1965), organizer of the Arab League which attacked Israel in 1948, often regarded as a corrupt, sybaritic, hypersexed autocrat, is grossly misperceived in the West, maintains Stadiem in this glitzy, unconvincing biography. Farouk has been unfairly portrayed as a friend of the Third Reich, claims the author, arguing that the king's German sympathies were strictly a function of Anglophobia, not of anti-Semitism, and pointing to Farouk's many Jewish friends, advisers and mistresses. Stadiem ( Marilyn Monroe Confidential ) limns Farouk as a genuinely popular ruler, ``a smiling blond god, a pharaoh whom the masses . . . could genuinely like and want to . . . serve.'' He illuminates the CIA's role in abetting the Nasser-led officer coup that toppled the king in 1952. He also presents suggestive evidence that Farouk's assassination in exile was the work of Egypt's secret service with the complicity of the Italian government. Photos. (June)