From Beirut to Jerusalem

By Thomas Friedman

Farrar, Straus, Giroux

$22.95, 509 pp.

THE Middle East captures the attention of Americans like no other region of the world. It fascinates, enthralls, captivates.

Striking pictures from the region are featured nightly on the evening news. We sit, glued to our television sets, gasping in wonder at the complexities and conflicts of a world so different from ours.

And we don't understand.

From Beirut to Jerusalem is Thomas Friedman's introduction of the Middle East to Americans, and his engaging narrative format accomplishes exactly what he sets out to do.

Friedman, who spent five years covering Beirut and four years covering Jerusalem for The New York Times, details his experiences in the Middle East. These are the experiences of an American fascinated with the region but shocked when the reality he finds there is strikingly different from that which the media portrays.

Most refreshing in a book about the Middle East is the preponderence of anecdotes, interviews and observations--and the limited amount of opinions.

Friedman guides the reader through his assignments in the Middle East, exploring the never-ending conflicts between Christian Maronites, Syrians, Israelis, Phalangists, and Druse in Lebanon and the Israelis and Palestinians in Israel.

His tales of life in Beirut are less subtle and more hard-hitting than the section on Jerusalem, which meanders between various explanations of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the conflicts within Judaism in Israel and the unique relationship between American Jews and Israelis.

Friedman explains what on the surface seems inexplicable, such as why Syrian President Hafez Assad would destroy an entire city--Hama--in his country. He knows and understands how the shackles of tradition and history have shaped the policies of leaders involved in nation-building in the Middle East.

But most of all, Friedman experiences, and the reader experiences with him.

Friedman's ability to draw the reader into his world is epitomized by his description of a stone-throwing attack by a Palestinian on his family's car. You feel the rock hit the windshield, you see the determined, unemotional look on the stone-thrower's face and you understand the reactions of the scared wife and two young children facing a shattered windshield.