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From Beirut to Jerusalem: One man's Middle Eastern odyssey
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A Second Edition of Thomas Friedman's stunning book, the first edition of which won the American National Book Award.
"If you're only going to read one book on the Middle East, this is it."
Seymour Hersh
In this lucid, incisive and memorable book, acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, Friedman reaches deeper into the traumatic and complex recent history of the conflicts in the Middle East than any previous writer. For this new edition, Friedman has added a further two chapters that bring the book up to 1995 and the unfolding and stalling of the Middle Eastern peace process.
From Beirut to Jerusalem is wonderfully shrewd, surprisingly funny and indispensable to anyone seeking a fuller understanding of the political causes and psychological effects of the seemingly endless strife which besets this embattled region.
"If you're only going to read one book on the Middle East, this is it."
Seymour Hersh
In this lucid, incisive and memorable book, acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, Friedman reaches deeper into the traumatic and complex recent history of the conflicts in the Middle East than any previous writer. For this new edition, Friedman has added a further two chapters that bring the book up to 1995 and the unfolding and stalling of the Middle Eastern peace process.
From Beirut to Jerusalem is wonderfully shrewd, surprisingly funny and indispensable to anyone seeking a fuller understanding of the political causes and psychological effects of the seemingly endless strife which besets this embattled region.
571 pages, Paperback
First published June 1,1989
This edition
- Format
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571 pages, Paperback
- Published
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January 1, 1998 by HarperCollins
- ISBN
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9780006530701
- ASIN
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0006530702
- Language
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English
About the author
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Thomas L. Friedman is an internationally renowned author, reporter, and, columnist—the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes and the author of six bestselling books, among them From Beirut to Jerusalem and The World Is Flat. In a book review for The Village Voice, Edward Said criticized what he saw as a naive, arrogant, and orientalist account of the Israel–Palestine conflict in Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem.
In January 1995, Friedman took over the New York Times Foreign Affairs column. “It was the job I had always aspired to,” he recalled. “I had loved reading columns and op-ed articles ever since I was in high school, when I used to wait around for the afternoon paper, the Minneapolis Star, to be delivered. It carried Peter Lisagor. He was a favorite columnist of mine. I used to grab the paper from the front step and read it on the living room floor.”
Friedman has been the Times‘s Foreign Affairs columnist since 1995, traveling extensively in an effort to anchor his opinions in reporting on the ground. “I am a big believer in the saying ‘If you don't go, you don't know.' I tried to do two things with the column when I took it over. First was to broaden the definition of foreign affairs and explore the impacts on international relations of finance, globalization, environmentalism, biodiversity, and technology, as well as covering conventional issues like conflict, traditional diplomacy, and arms control. Second, I tried to write in a way that would be accessible to the general reader and bring a broader audience into the foreign policy conversation—beyond the usual State Department policy wonks. It was somewhat controversial at the time. So, I eventually decided to write a book that would explain the framework through which I was looking at the world. It was a framework that basically said if you want to understand the world today, you have to see it as a constant tension between what was very old in shaping international relations (the passions of nationalism, ethnicity, religion, geography, and culture) and what was very new (technology, the Internet, and the globalization of markets and finance). If you try to see the world from just one of those angles, it won't make sense. It is all about the intersection of the two.”
In January 1995, Friedman took over the New York Times Foreign Affairs column. “It was the job I had always aspired to,” he recalled. “I had loved reading columns and op-ed articles ever since I was in high school, when I used to wait around for the afternoon paper, the Minneapolis Star, to be delivered. It carried Peter Lisagor. He was a favorite columnist of mine. I used to grab the paper from the front step and read it on the living room floor.”
Friedman has been the Times‘s Foreign Affairs columnist since 1995, traveling extensively in an effort to anchor his opinions in reporting on the ground. “I am a big believer in the saying ‘If you don't go, you don't know.' I tried to do two things with the column when I took it over. First was to broaden the definition of foreign affairs and explore the impacts on international relations of finance, globalization, environmentalism, biodiversity, and technology, as well as covering conventional issues like conflict, traditional diplomacy, and arms control. Second, I tried to write in a way that would be accessible to the general reader and bring a broader audience into the foreign policy conversation—beyond the usual State Department policy wonks. It was somewhat controversial at the time. So, I eventually decided to write a book that would explain the framework through which I was looking at the world. It was a framework that basically said if you want to understand the world today, you have to see it as a constant tension between what was very old in shaping international relations (the passions of nationalism, ethnicity, religion, geography, and culture) and what was very new (technology, the Internet, and the globalization of markets and finance). If you try to see the world from just one of those angles, it won't make sense. It is all about the intersection of the two.”
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