Beirut [Paperback]

Widely praised as the definitive history of Beirut, this is the story of a city that has stood at the crossroads of Mediterranean civilization for more than four thousand years. The last major work completed by Samir Kassir before his tragic death in 2005,Beirutis a tour de force that takes the reader from the ancient to the modern world, offering a dazzling panorama of the city's Seleucid, Roman, Arab, Ottoman, and French incarnations. Kassir vividly describes Beirut's spectacular growth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concentrating on its emergence after the Second World War as a cosmopolitan capital until its near destruction during the devastating Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990. Generously illustrated and eloquently written,Beirutilluminates contemporary issues of modernity and democracy while at the same time memorably recreating the atmosphere of one of the world's most picturesque, dynamic, and resilient cities.

One of the leading voices for progressive change in the Middle East,Samir Kassir(1960-2005) taught at the Institut des Sciences Politiques of the Universit? Saint-Joseph in Beirut, worked as a journalist and editorial writer for the dailyAn-Naharnewspaper there, and was a co-founder of the Democratic Left Movement in Lebanon. The author of several other books, includingBeing Arab,Kassir was assassinated by a car bomb in Beirut in June 2005.

List of Illustrations
Foreword by Robert Fisk
Translators Note
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

Prologue: The Eyes of the Mind

Part One: From the Ancient to the Modern World

1. Beirut before Beirut
2. The Great Transformation
3. The Ibrahim Pasha Era
4. The Roads from Damascus
5. A Window on Ottoman Modernity

Part Two: The Awakening

6. A Cultural Revolution
7. Between Boston and Rome
8. The Horizon of the World
9. Uncertain Identities