Review, Lebanon: Fire and Embers (Dilip Hiro)

(Disclaimer: the author of this review has no professional experience in Lebanon. This is not an authoritative commentary on Lebanese history or the Lebanese Civil War [LCW]. It is only a review of a book. This review was originally posted at the Amazon website, which has since disabled access to references.)

After reading many books about Lebanese history and the Civil War in particular, I believe this is the best. There are several advantages this book has over alternatives.

The first is that Hiro is not plugged into the customary ideological debates. He feels neither the defensiveness nor the regret that plagues much Western historical writing on Southwest Asia.¹ On the one hand, he has some strong ideological convictions (I disagree with these), but spells out what they are). On the other hand, he is oddly unconcerned about revealing facts that undermine those convictions; perhaps his big advantage is that he's too naive to mislead the reader for long. After the introduction, he sets aside his opinions.
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