Book description
NOT SINCE THOMAS FRIEDMAN'S
FROM BEIRUT TO JERUSALEM
IN 1989 HAS A JOURNALIST OFFERED SUCH A POIGNANT AND PASSIONATE PORTRAIT
OF LEBANON-A UNIQUELY PLURALIST ARAB COUNTRY STRUGGLING TO DEFEND ITS
VIABILITY IN A TURBULENT AND TREACHEROUS MIDDLE EAST.
Michael Young,
who was taken to Lebanon at age seven by his Lebanese mother after the
death of his American father and who has worked most of his career as
a journalist there for American publications, brings to life a country
in the crossfire of invasions, war, domestic division, incessant
sectarian scheming, and often living in fear of its neighbors. Young
knows or has known many of the players, politicians, writers, and
religious leaders.
A country riven by domestic tensions that have often resulted in
assassinations, under the considerable sway of Hezbollah (in alliance
with Iran and Syria), frequently set upon by Israel and Syria, nearly
destroyed by civil war, Lebanon remains an exception among Arab
countries because it is a place where liberal instincts and tolerance
struggle to stay alive.
An important and enduring symbol, Lebanon was once the outstanding
example of an (almost) democratic society in an inhospitable,
dangerous region-a laboratory both for modernity and violence, as a
Lebanese intellectual who was later assassinated once put it.
Young relates the growing tension between a domineering Syria and a
Lebanese opposition in which charismatic leader and politician Rafiq
al-Hariri was assassinated and the Independence Intifada-the Cedar
Revolution-broke out. His searing account of his country's
confrontation with its domestic and regional demons is one of hope
found and possibly lost.
In this stunning narrative, Young tells us what might have
been his country's history, and what it may yet be.
