This is a set of ten tapes. All are professionally done, but only the last three match the dialogue from the book. That means you better have a good background in colloquial Arabic (or be in a class) to make use of the first seven tapes.

They all have solid material--ranging from simple phrases to detailed conversations. Each tape features oral exams that test listening comprehension.

The only thing that prevents me from giving it a higher rating is a lack of a transcript for the first seven tapes. Some people might also wonder why this wasn't released in CD format.

I did find these tapes useful preparation for travels in Syria.

I think this is the best book for intermediate colloquial Arabic. DO NOT BUY THIS AS AN INTRODUCTORY BOOK!

Most students will need a solid background in colloquial Arabic. This book uses English transliteration only--no Arabic script--so you'll need to have a good idea how to pronounce common Arabic syllables before you begin.

I found this an excellent resource during my recent travels through Syria and Lebanon.

well it was a really boring book and i think it should not be appointed to anyone

Harris, an occasional resident of Lebanon since 1983 and now a university instructor in New Zealand, has produced the first reliable and readable history of Lebanon to appear in years. The first section introduces the country's geography, sects, and politics; the second provides a routine but useful overview of Lebanon's political history from 1920 to 1989; and the final one breaks new ground in English by making sense of the country's recent past, dealing at length with the Michel Aoun's to throw off the Syrian occupation, then the consequences of Aoun's defeat.

Harris is that rare foreign specialist of Lebanon who makes no excuses for the Syrian occupation there. He notes that since Syrian troops gained nearly full control of Lebanon in October 1990, the regime of Hafiz al-Asad has treated Lebanon as "a conquered state" and calls this era the "years of stagnation and humiliation" for ordinary Lebanese. Harris rightly interprets Syrian actions in Lebanon-economic and cultural no less than political and military-as intended to stabilize Syrian primacy. He reports how the Lebanese have responded to life in the world's only remaining satellite state by trying, against overwhelming odds, to maintain a civil society. His description brings to mind Poland in the 1950s, suggesting that while the Syrian yoke will be heavy and long, it will not permanently prevail.

Middle East Quarterly, March 1997

The small things in this world often go unnoticed. Importance itself becomes reduced to a mere state of relativity in a system where the balance of power is solidly directional (westward) if not solely regional (West). And so David Gilmour writes of the longest war, in the smallest place in the world. In his book, Lebanon, the Fractured Country, Gilmour tries to explain why political instability was an unavoidable and necessary occurrence within the Lebanese society, and why the Lebanese were eventually driven to simply fight in order to resolve their problems (Gilmour, x).
In the beginning of the text, Gilmour apologizes for the extensive history he provides, but insists that it is the only way to properly relay his point to the reader. He begins with an almost sociological discussion of the Lebanese situation. His views are both personal and distant, as the reader recalls that his first visit to Lebanon was not until 1971, a mere four years before the official onset of the Civil War. When Gilmour finally introduces us to the actual war, it seems like just another piece of history?he involves us with nothing significant or even vaguely telling of the Lebanese society as a whole. And where, I ask, is the Lebanese dimension in this? In the beginning of the text, Gilmour pushes upon his readers the seemingly viral quality of political instability that contaminated Lebanese society; nonetheless, he shrouds this belief in a maelstrom of history. Battered in the onslaught, a third of the way into the book I found myself looking up, mystified as to what he was talking about; I had forgotten the objective of the text. Upon reviewing my notes, I re-realized the second part of his objective, which was to prove the "endemic?quality that defined Lebanese political instability. I came to gather that through the congested use of history, this exact thing was being proven.
Due to Gilmour's lengthy description of Lebanon's plagued political system, I began to wonder if the Lebanese conflict was simply a war between interest groups, gone awry. The war, as Gilmour claims, was not sectarian to begin with; it became that way. Gilmour says that, eventually men were forced to take sides; he apologizes for the conflict they engaged, blaming them in the beginning and then forgiving them in the end. When the extremism affected the mainstream is when the hate began, and the continuation of war was finally justified. Incidents began to polarize the nation, delineating the society past class, filing the people into neat rows of Arabs and Maronites; this is when contemporary divisions based on economic interests, and the balance of modernization vs. preservation, became magnified. When the histories that are described in every chapter of Gilmour's book finally culminate with the statement that "the vast majority of the [Lebanese] people had no desire to continue the war (Gilmour, 119.),?we realize that the Lebanese dimension to the civil war is not, in fact, the initiation of the war, but rather the perpetuation of it. Extremists and interest groups, whom I ally with political partisanship, selfishly dealt the Lebanese a hand with far too many low cards, and not enough spades. These staunchly agendaed groups led the Lebanese from a battle of political in-fighting into what evolved as civil war; in the beginning it was hardly "civil?at all.
I found most of the text to be essential until the section entitled, "The War and Beyond.?The presence of words after the chapter, "Civil War,?I found to be unacceptable. Gilmour lost sight of his purpose when he chose to continue writing. The author had written an engaging text up until this point, where he decided to keep writing about the political tragedies that affected Lebanon. Clearly presented in the beginning of the book, is Gilmour's objective, which presumes to highlight the presence of a Lebanese dimension to the civil war, as well as the political strife that made it inescapable regardless of international presence. Gilmour does this, and his does this well. His only failure? Hyperextension.

This book deserves to be in print. Unfortunately, the truly detailed, play-by-play history of the Lebanese civil war has yet to be written. Petran views the conflict through a more or less traditional left lens, which is helpful in understanding some of the specifics of the war in the seventies and eighties, and in particular the rise and fall of Petran's hero Kamal Jumblatt. It also makes the book remarkably dated. You need more than socio-economic theory to understand the death of Lebanon, and this book does little to explain how important political Islam was even before its influence became obvious in the mid eighties. Conversely, her outrage at the Maronites and their atrocities doesn't help toward any understanding of how embattled the Maronites have always felt in Lebanon, and how that paranoia colored their actions then and continues to guide them now. Marxist theory is all well and good, but the people who actually fought the war would have scoffed at the notion that this was an economic struggle disguised as a sectarian one. The combatants really did see themselves involved in an existential religious war, and it might have helped if the author had taken them seriously.

Salem, in charge of foreign affairs during the whole of Amin Gemayel's presidency and a distinguished professor of politics, provides a detailed insider's view of his country's politics during some of its most turbulent years. His candid and full account offers much new information on the May 17, 1983, agreement with Israel, the withdrawal of American troops from Beirut, the discussions to reform Lebanon's political system, and Gemayel's unsuccessful effort to appoint a successor.

But even more interesting are the many vignettes salted through Salem's personable memoir. In late 1987, at a time when Saddam Husayn and Hafiz al-Asad were aligned on opposite sides of the Iraq-Iran War, the two men met at an Arab League summit and "were seen walking together and joking." A mere fifteen minutes before his presidential term was about to expire, Gemayel invited Michel Aoun to form a government; to make matters stranger yet, Gemayel had previously been close to firing Aoun from his position as army commander.

Judging from Salem's anecdotes, jokes play an important role in diplomacy. In a get-acquainted breakfast with Ronald Reagan in the family quarters at the White House, the affable host's efforts at humor left a nervous Gemayel ever more tense. When Salem went to Damascus to lobby the Syrians to accept the May 17 agreement, Syria's foreign minister signaled his government's rejection of the accord by making a joke about it: "[H]umour was substance," Salem wryly comments.

Middle East Quarterly, September 1995

I personally thought that Beirut Blues was long, confusing and boring. I didn't have any clue what was going on nor did I have any motivation to finish the book, because I had grown no emotional attatchment to the characters. I couldn't work out what the main character, Asmahan, was actually thinking or understand her relationship with her friends and family. I also didn't know what was going on in the setting throughout the book either which is a shame because I know from research that she lives in an interesting place, yet it was not portrayed clearly enough for the reader to get that impression. I DO NOT recommend this book to anyone because I think it was a waste of time, words and paper.

I agree with another reviewer who called this book "long, confusing and boring". Not only did I not relate or empathise with the main character, Asmahan (an upper-class woman purposelessly travelling back and forth between Beirut and her family's country village), but I also found the description of her relationships to others (friends, lovers, family members, etc.) to be vague and insufficient. You never get to fully understand her actions and motives, much less her feelings. The book, which consists of letters written by Asmahan to such an unlikely cast of recipients as her friend Hayat, the war, Beirut and Billie Holiday (?), among others, drags on forever, without adding to your knowledge of either the characters or the political context. I finished it out of sheer stubbornness, and regret not having paid enough attention to previous reviewers.

A further comment (though in all fairness not concerning the book's quality) should be made in relation to the preposterous comment on the book's front flap, which says: "With the critical and commercial success in the U.S. of her two earlier books ... Hanan al-Shaykh's standing as the Arab world's foremost woman writer has been confirmed". Are we supposed to take this seriously? I should believe that Ms. al-Shaykh's standing as an Arab female writer ought to relate to the quality of her writing first of all, and - if any commercial element must be introduced at all - then to the sales of her books in that very Arab world whose foremost novelist she is supposed to be (an assertion which this book should call into question, by the way). American arrogance has been at work here. Would great sales in Arab countries make an American writer "the U.S.'s foremost"?

This novel poses complex problems for the reader, and there fore I find it difficult to give either a straight positive ranking or negative one. If you are interested in understanding the inner workings of the mind of someone who is living in a war-ravaged society, then this book is excellent. But if you are reading it to understand more about Lebanon's bloody history and civil war, you won't find much here...it's really focused on the thought processes of its protagonist, Asmahan, and if you don't bring to the book existing knowledge of the place or the conflict, you won't learn anything. Therefore, I'd really recommend it only to those who know the backdrop of Lebanon's civil war.

The author is clearly biased, she has tailored her research and the subsequent conclusions to idealize one side of the conflict while demonizing the other. On some occasions she dives into treacherous scholastic investigation, revealing the number of cows, pigs, and sheep slaughtered during a marauding but then makes blatant generalizations and oversimplifications on issues that matter greatly, most notably the issue of identities, narratives and historical oppression in the Mountain. On one occasion she writes something like: The Maronites are most likely (it could have been "probably") Arabs." Where did the analytical analyses go? It seems to me that such a fact is significantly relevant and might have warranted a bit more research which would have eliminated the uncertainty in her statement. She also gives way too much credit to the economical disparities in the Mountain which is indicative of her school of thought but fails to capture the spirit of the conflict. This is quite simply a bad book, aside from the biography it is worthless.

Instead of being a fascinating account of a crucial period in the history of the Christians and Druzes in Mount Lebanon and Syria, the book appears to be an obvious attempt at demonizing the victims and justifying the massacres. It is disappointing that so much bias was camouflaged as an objective interpretation of historical events. On several occasions, the book gives the impression that the author's interpretations of events constitute the ultimate truth. At times, this is done without taking into consideration even the interpretations of the people whom the book uses as references. The only beneficial part of the book is the extensive bibliography, otherwise very disappointing.

This book may be accused of being biased but it's well worth reading nontheless as it provides an account that is inavluable in explaning the more recent civil war in Lebanon and in fact the roots of many Middle East problems as the ottoman empire crumbled and led to increased European intervention. Fawaz is one of the main researchers in 19th century Social and Economic transformation in the Levant and is an excellent complement to fine general accounts by Roger Owen, Charles Issawi and Chevallier. Bias aside. Fawaz discusses the centralizing administrative reforms of the mid-19th century Syria and how these acted in conjunction with a unique combination of internal and external social and economic forces that collided to generate a violent civil war in the Lebanon and Damascus in 1860. The book analyzes the socio-economic conditions and circumstances that contributed to the civil conflict in Syria of 1860. It also considers the changes in the international economy in the mid-19th century and its effect in the context of Beirut and Damascus, European cultural, economic and political influence in the Syrian province and the changes in Christian-Muslim relations in terms of the application of the reforms. Ultimately it shows that the 1860 Civil War in Syria was confessional mostly in its manifestation but was largely an expression of grievance against the rapid and widespread social and economic transformation that occurred in the first half of the 19th century.

Though I am certain that Peteet is knowledgeable in her field of research, this book is quite painful to read. Her verbose style and anticlimatic narration leave the reader feeling bored and dissapointed. With such an interesting topic, I would have expected to be more captivated by this ethnography.

The book is not a mover in any sense, the author makes it painstakingly clear that he was not responsible for the IDF's mistakes. The reader is left with either pronouncing him an unrecognized hero or a coward who would not go through with his pasifistic inclinations. Which ever the case it still lives as aliving document of a person who refused to march to the drum beat that was offered at the time. for those who have been to Israel you are aware of the bravado that is placed on their soldiers and this man was in the autumn of life and had seen enough tradgedy from the second world war to fill a life time. Don't go into it expecting to much and you won't be disappointed.