Thomas L. Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem: An Exploration of the Middle East's Troubled History

Andrew P.: this book is brilliant. i have always been interested in israel and its conflicts. this book opens your eyes to all the peoples and factions and makes their interactions so much less complicated to follow. for instance The Lebanon and its role and its peoples is an eye opener. everything i thought i knew i didnt. seems there is right and wrong on all sides and god help those innocents caught in between. more books of this nature needed from Mr Friedman, who by the way i have often seen on CNN, as although i have since bought some of his other books i am a history buff. He has some great personal experiences to relate also. i cannot recommend this book highly enough. thank you, Melanie [from Wales]

United Kingdom on Feb 22, 2021

Ken Buxton: Told me so much that I didn't know about the fact that tribal loyalties are much stronger than national loyalties to the STATE. A very readable and informative account of a age old dispute that sadly looks as if it will go on for ever.
The horrors of war and the suffering of the civilian populations on both sides were told with an unbiased account of the inhuman attitudes shown by the leaders 'on all sides to the atrocities commited on the victims.KEN.B

United Kingdom on Oct 17, 2015

salsa bandit: i'm writing this at 6 a.m., so my brain is not fully awake. nevertheless, i could not pass up the opportunity to say how much i enjoyed this book, which, apart from everything else, is wonderfully written and not,despite its subject, without a sense of humor. the author knows his subject from the inside and at ground level, having lived and worked as a journalist in the region for many years. also, the fact that freidman is jewish contributes a unique perspectgive to his observations, which are amazingly free of bias and extremely even-handed. sorry i can't provide more detail to this review, but i can promise that if you are at all interested in the subject, you will enjoy and benefit from this work. (and now i'm going back to bed)

Canada on Sep 29, 2014

Mina Bowater: There is no finer book ever written about the Middle East and all its problems than this one. I would go so far as to say I wish every politician on both sides of the Atlantic had read it from cover to cover before intervening in any of the countries but having done so would have understood that it could never have been anything else but a long haul with a heavy dosage of realism if we were ever going to make things better rather than worse. Illuminating at all levels not least the thousands of years culture of an 'eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth' of the Desert peoples as illustrated in Chapter Four's Hama Rules and the Bedouin story of the Old Man's Turkey. It is a truly 'must' read for us all if we are ever going to understand the culture of the Desert.

United Kingdom on Jun 21, 2014

K. Moody: As a college student studying International Affairs, I managed to avoid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for 4 years. I never felt like I had a fight in it, and felt the field had "too many cooks in the kitchen." I focused mostly on other regions and topics, generally aware of big picture issues with Israel, settlements, and the plight of Palestinians. I came across this book in searching for books on Syrian history for my job and decided to give it a shot, at least for the portions covering Lebanese history. I have never been a fan of Mr. Friedman's work before, but this book really is a masterpiece, and one that should be read by anyone looking to study history, the Middle East, or international affairs.

This book has almost too many good qualities to list. It is excellently nuanced and balanced, detailed enough for the expert, but explained and fast paced enough for the novice of the region. Do not be fooled by the length of the book, it is a genuine page turner, with only a few slow points, and by the end you are wishing someone would take the initiative and cover the years in depth since its printing in 1988. I was initially afraid at a book so old, afraid I would be...

United States on Jan 27, 2014

Mike Obermaier: I first read this book twenty years ago, when the events dscribed within were very much current headlines. Twenty years later, the events have faded from the foreground, although the background problem has hardly changed, unless it is for the worse. What remains fascinating is the personal story of Tom Friedman, showing the evolution of his attitudes towards the byzantine, impenetrable and cruel mess of Middle East politics and war. Many of Friedman's detractors (there are many) write him off as an unrepentant admirer and supporter of Israel, and insist that his work is not balanced. This seems to me to be rather missing the point, as it is a partial autobiography, reflected in the chaos surrounding him, rather than with Friedman himself as the centre of gravity. It is a personal view of the Middle East, rather than a polemic. It is very well written and is definitely still worth reading... even if at the end of it you, like me, like Friedman have no clearer understanding of the dynamics of the Arab Israeli conflict.

United Kingdom on May 09, 2012

David A. Baer: Friedman wraps up his book by talking about four dead men and what they must do if peace is to come to the troubled slice of land still fought over by Israelis and Palestinians. Yitzhak Rabin, Yasir Arafat, Hafez Assad, and Jordan's King Hussein were very much alive a decade ago when Friedman wrote an appendix to this still-riveting work, though the shadow of Rabin's assasin was almost upon him. This casts an eery veneer over Friedman's sensible thoughts on shifting power and the need for all partners to 'buy a ticket' if peace has any hope of overcoming the region's deeply etched pessimisms, even if one now needs to shift the burden of choice to the successors of these four men, only three of whom had the good fortune to die in their own beds.

Friedman is ubiquitous these days on television news, bookstore shelves, and award ceremonies. With good reason.

No one is better at spotting patterns in the apparent chaos of modern events, and then distilling them into understandable images. The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Longitudes and Attitudes, The World is Flat and his New York Times and syndicated columns have filled Friedman's shelf with Pulitzers and placed his voice...

United States on Jul 18, 2005