From Beirut to Jerusalem

Friedman, the NEW YORK TIMES columnist now best known for his book on globalization, THE WORLD IS FLAT, was a correspondent in Lebanon and Israel in the tumultuous 1980s. This production is an abridgment of his book about those years, with the focus on his personal adventures rather than political analysis. Friedman tells compelling stories, but his narration is oddly detached. He relates how he watched a man being kidnapped, how his apartment was bombed, and a host of other harrowing events with the same glibness he uses to spin humorous anecdotes. It's not that he writes without compassion, only that one doesn't hear it in his voice. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

June 1, 1989
Friedman, who twice garnered the Pulitzer as a New York Times correspondent in Lebanon and Israel, further delineates the two countries in this provocative, absorbing memoir cum political and social analysis. A condensed, incisive history of the Middle East is proffered, as well as personal reflections on his 10-year sojourn: the issue of Friedman's Jewishness in Beirut, the fact that he was the Times 's first Jewish reporter in Israel, the bombing of his apartment in Beirut by the PLO, which took the lives of his Lebanese news assistant's children. A top-flight observer and interpreter, the author elucidates the complex religious factions obstructing Lebanese and Israeli politics; the agendas of various posturing, media-loving Arab and Israeli leaders; the perversity of daily life in ``Wild West Beirut''; the wanton murder in Lebanon of U.S. marines and Palestinian refugees; America's fascination with Israel; the waning romance between Israeli and American Jews; and the Palestinian intifada.