Reviews for History of Modern Lebanon

The average rating for History of Modern Lebanon based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-11-23 00:00:00 Bridgette Leeson The book is an interesting book about the history of Lebanon. The reader will definitely learn a lot about the modern history of Lebanon starting from the 16th century. However, the author's political affiliation made him draw certain relations and conclusions that are not objective and are not reliable mainly about the Phalangists and the Lebanese Forces. I mention some of the shortcomings: 1- Hafez Assad wanted to help the Christians of Lebanon against the Palestinians in 1976. This is not completely accurate although it is true that the Syrian army entered Lebanon to assist the Christians against the Palestinians. However, the reason was mainly for Syria's interest and to limit the power of PLO fearing their power will expand and reach Syria. Actually, when Sadat signed the peace treaty with Israel in Camp David, Assad's attitude changed completely towards the PLO after he concluded that they will be cornered by Jordan, Egypt, KSA, etc... and things started taking a turn. 2- The author mentioned that Bachir Gemayel is a fundamentalist, Christian. This is a biased conclusion. He was not a fundamentalist. All that it takes is to listen to all of his speeches and read his lectures and one can clearly conclude that he was not a fundamentalist. 3- The author compares the triplicate agreement in 1986 with Taef and mentions that those who rejected it in 1986 accepted Taef. This is not true. The two agreements although they shared some common items but were completely different. Moreover, the balance of power has changed from 1986 till 1989 so acceptance and rejection is subject to power proportionality.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-02-03 00:00:00 Timothy Cook Has some valuable information but it's clouded with bias. Imo any book on history, especially touching on a recent civil war, should do it's best to understand both view points and pose them both objectively.