Customer Reviews

A History of Modern Lebanon

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There is something unique about this book. It does not only narrate Lebanon's historical events, it analyzes them from a socio-economic perspective. Traboulsi is not only a historian. He is a seasoned Lebanese political activist and partisan of the now-disbanded Organization of Communist Activity. Accordingly, a number of accounts in his book come from a person who was well-situated to learn about them firsthand.
Unlike the description of this book, it is not the only work on Lebanese history in the past forty years. However, the book is certainly the best recommended for first-time readers who have no or minimum background information on the subject.
Without going into great detail, the author assembles an enormous amount of information and presents it in this enjoyable read whose language was shaped by a talented Marlin Dick, one of the best Western journalists based in Lebanon.
For those who are familiar with other literature on the subject, this book brings together several themes drawn from Kamal Salibi's A House of Many Mansions, Samir Kassir's A History of Beirut as well as primary sources. Traboulsi deals well with archival material and other primary sources and conducts excellent research.
A History of Modern Lebanon (as opposed to Salibi's A Modern History of Lebanon), fixes the starting date of the state of Lebanon at the sixteenth century unlike other books that go into painstaking detail to narrate the history of this nation since ancient times.
From then on, Traboulsi ascends chronologically and his story reaches the Independence Intifada of 2005. At times, readers might feel that the author delves into irrelevant accounts. But overall, the book is coherent and offers substantiated arguments.

A HISTORY OF MODERN LEBANON by Fawwaz Traboulsi is a very good introduction to the structural aspects (economic, political, sectarian) of Lebanese history from the 1500s up to 1990, focusing on the 19th and 20th centuries. The reader learns much about the geopolitical and economic forces and movements that shaped the quest for autonomy among the diverse peoples of Lebanon. As a newcomer to this history, I would have appreciated learning something more about the persons, not only the social forces, who have shaped Lebanon's quest for freedom from the Ottoman empire, France, and more recently Syria. This edition of the book is a translation of a text originally written in Arabic into English. I found the author's narrative voice did not come across clearly and distinctly until Parts II and III that cover the 20th century. After the Postscript, there is a very helpful chronology, glossary, fulsome notes and bibliography. Given the use of Arabic terms and names in the text, a much fuller glossary would help, and a separate section on the main actors in Lebanese history with phonetic spelling or pronunciation hints about their names. Also more pictures of persons and places would enrich this useful text. Having taught undergraduates for nine years, I would recommend this book for introductory courses in the social sciences as a good example of a structural history of a people and region, and for introductory courses to the history of the Middle East. I would also recommend this book for courses with a postcolonial perspective on how nations became 'imagined' into being by western powers with little regard for regional and sectarian realities. After the Postscript I was left to wonder why the Lebanese how not yet fully secularized political representation in their society. As a scholar on my way to live in Beirut in fall 2010, I look forward to learning more about the unique perspectives and convictions of the Lebanese people.

This book gives a detailed yet brief overview of Lebanon's history in a flowing and concise form. It sheds light on a Lebanon's various controversial phases in history, yet maintaining its objectivity. I recommend that anyone interested in the landmass called Lebanon to give this book a thorough read.

This book by Fawwwaz Traboulsi, aside from the poor print and paper qaulity, leaves the reader starving for new ideas or inspiring / revealing contents. It is simply a rehash of dozens of volumes that appeared on the subject in recent years which were much more scholarly written and presented a much more balanced presentation. The pretention on the back jacket that this is THE book on a modern history of Lebanon is incorrect; readers can just enter the word Lebanon on the [...] subject line and will have a list of 2,000 books including almost 25 new ones that cover the modern history of Lebanon even if they don't have the word "history" in their title. The book is not even enough on the LEFT (as Mr. Traboulsi is known as being a leading leftist academic) as it attempts to follow the current trend in Lebanon of a revisionist approach to rewriting the story of the civil war to staisfy a lot of groups. As for the events between 1516 and 1920 in Lebanon these can be found in almost every book on Lebanon. Mr. Traboulsi simply picked and chose the details of that period and there was nothing original there either. Don't waste your time or money.

A great book from a great professor.. Highly recommended.. m.Assad