Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66433 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Book Information
Winner of the 1989 National Book Award for non-fiction, this extraordinary best-seller is still the most incisive, thought-provoking book ever written about the Middle East. Thomas L Friedman, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, and now the Foreign Affairs columnist on the op-ed page of the New York Times, drew on his 10 years in the Middle East to write a book that The Wall Street Journal called "a sparkling intellectual guidebook...an engrossing journey not to be missed". Now with a new chapter that brings the ever-changing history of the conflict in the Middle East up to date, this seminal historical work reaffirms both its timeliness and its timelessness. "If you're only going to read one book on the Middle East, this is it". --Seymour Hersh

Customer Reviews

Well written but a touch simplistic
A great achievement - this is indeed a good starting point and Friedman is at his best when he relates the horror of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres of Palestinians in Lebanon. But there is a sense that he is trying to distil the Arab-Israeli conflict into easy nuggets for the reader - one needs to go much further than this. However he is refreshingly open about his own misconceptions and what he learnt from living in the region. Edward Said has a perceptive review of this book in his 'Politics of Dispossession'. For more depth on the Lebanon side, go to Robert Fisk's 'Pity the Nation'

An educational and enjoyable read
I didn't know anything about the Israel/Palestine conflict before reading this book. It is a place that has been in conflict for so long. I knew there were disputes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as there have been since I was old enough to take interest in the news. However, I didn't understand the history of this region.

The author is a journalist who spent time reporting in both Beirut and Jerusalem in the late 70's and the 80's. He is a Jewish American and is therefore sometimes accused of bias. I have an open mind on the topic and personally didn't detect any bias. Interestingly he has been accused on occasions of bias towards the Palestians as well!

The book covers the history of Israel and Palestine and also explains a little about the civil war that took place in the Lebanon. It looks at the views of both the Israelis and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and the rationale for the actions taken by both of them. The author also discusses how strange it was to see people going about their ordinary way of life amid bombing and gunfire. He talks at about the interesting people he met while living in the Middle East and how their lives have been impacted by the conflict.

Thomas Friedman has a wonderful way of writing which makes this book very easy to read and absorb. It is interesting, educational and in many places very amusing.

As it is not a recent book, it only covers events up to the early 90s. However I think it is a great introduction to the subject.

a potential starting place for reading about the Middle East
I had this book on my "to read" list for about a year, and then it sat on my shelf for five months after buying it before I finally got around to reading it. Now that I have finished the book I have to wonder what took me so long. The book is exceptional. From Beirut to Jerusalem is the story of Thomas Friedman and his analysis of the Palestine/Israel conflict. Friedman is a three time Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and this book presents and even handed and fair look at both the Palestinians and the Israelis. The book is broken up into three sections: Beirut, Jerusalem, and Washington.

Beirut is the story of the Palestinians. When Friedman was a young reporter, he was assigned a beat in Beirut (the newspaper made a point to assign a Jewish reporter to cover Beirut). Friedman does a good job showing exactly how the PLO came to power and the importance (and the flaw) of Yasir Arafat in the Palestinian movement. Despite being Jewish himself, Friedman does not present much of a bias against the Palestinians in his reporting. Friedman shows how there truly is no central authority for the Palestinians and how amazing it is the Arafat was able to unify the PLO into any sort of centralized body. The one thing that surprised me was how the Palestinians (and Beirut as a whole) was essential tribal politics. Beirut was an example of what can go right in having a disparate group of Christians, Jews, and Muslims live together in a Middle Eastern city. Beirut also ended up being a disaster of what can go wrong: everything. When push came to shove, the different groups split apart, formed militias and held fast to tribal lines. It was in Beirut that the PLO found a temporary home (at least until Israel pushed north).

Jerusalem is the story of the Jews. We all know the story of how after World War II the Jews were given a state in the Middle East and it was on their traditional homeland of Israel. This displaced the Arabs (Palestinians) that were living on the land at the time. Friedman discusses the Utopian vision that Israel is because of the religious context for the Jews. The interesting thing is that Israel was very nearly formed as a secular state for the diaspora Jews, and it was only the Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews that initially held onto their religion (rather than their culture). American Jews viewed Israel truly as the Promised Land, and the Christian world saw Israel through the tinted glasses of the Old Testament. Surrounded on all sides by Arabs who do not want the Jews in Israel, the nation has never truly been at peace and it is in this section of the book that Friedman shows just how difficult peace in the region is.

Washington is the end of the book and Friedman ties several things together. There was a very clear progression from Beirut to Jerusalem as Friedman was transferred over to Jerusalem, but at the same time I felt that Friedman presented enough material that I could begin to understand the context of Jerusalem. Thomas Friedman presents his thoughts on how diplomacy could possibly work for the Israelis and the Palestinians (using the Egypt/Israel peace as a model), and also further explains just how complex the relationships are in the Middle East. We get to see the attempts of the United States to broker peace deals, and how these succeeded and failed, and in some cases, why. Friedman discusses the role the United States does play, and perhaps should play in the region (at least as it affects Israel and Palestine).

This is an absolutely fascinating book. Obviously, this should be used as a primer on the subject and if one feels interested, should lead into further research into the region, but this was a very informative and interesting book and while I was confused at times by the complexity of the situation and shocked at the enormity of the problem, I also felt that I read a valuable book on the region. I thought this was an excellent book and it should belong on any "must read" list for books on the Middle East.

-Joe Sherry