Beirut

By (author) Kassir Samir

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, "Beirut" is 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, "Beirut" illuminates 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.

Table of contents
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 Part Three: The Capital of the Mandate
10. France Broadens Its Mission
11. The French City
12. Grand-Liban and Petit Paris
13. A Crucible for Independence Part Four: The Cosmopolitan Metropolis of the Arabs
14. The Switzerland of the East
15. Beirut, Male and Female
16. The Pleasures of the World
17. Ecochard's Lost Wagers Part Five: The City of Every Danger
18. On the Knife''s Edge
19. The End of Innocence
20. Beirut, O Beirut! Epilogue: To Be or To Have Been Notes Glossary of Arabic and Turkish Terms Bibliography Photographic Credits Index