The author of this book takes the reader through a wonderful series of images, most of them haunting, but all of them sending thoughtful sparkles through the mind, like a tart juice. It is refreshing, but it wakes you up. From the first page, the reader is confronted with a paradox. The story is told by Marianne who is dangerously depressed, but it is also Marianne who is telling the story in a beautifully competent way. So, hope and despair are mixed from the beginning. Once started, it is difficult to put down. Get it, and treat yourself to some real thinking.

Readers will feel nourished by the exquisite prose of this novel!

The Bullet Collection is an incredibly moving story set during the Lebanese civil war. The narrative chronicles the persistant influence the war has on a loving family.

If you've ever wondered what it's like to be a civilian in a city at war, this is the book for you!

This is one of the most honest, evocative books I've ever read on how it is to grow up in war ... every day we're seeing images of war, but rarely do we confront with such bare honesty the destruction visited on families and children. This book isn't an easy read, but the writing is so lyrical and beautiful you're pulled along almost helplessly ... into a violent, unpredictable world few of us can imagine, traveling the narrator Marianna's difficult journey in her effort to somehow come to grips with her past. The layering of past with present is so skillfully done, the reader experiences memory the way it really happens, the way our lives are made up of layers that communicate with one another all the time. I'd recommend this book to anyone who is a serious reader. It is brilliant.

I'm thrilled to see the 'emerging voices' series on Amazon. Wonderful!.

This book is one of the powerful, poignant books I have ever read about wars (and I've read a great deal). It tackles the deeper issues of violence -- how does the soul feel when confronted with violence, mindless violence, on a daily basis? how do people react? what happens to one's sensitivity? one's ability for honest laughter? one's interactions with others?

Hoda Barakat delves into those issues - and does so courageously and poetically. She also presents them through the eyes of a homosexual man. Quite powerful!.

Highly recommended - to Lebanese, to Arabs, and to all people interested in examining the effects of war and violence on every-day people.

- Rania (a Lebanese-American)

What a brave author, tackling two controversial subjects in one single masterfully-written novel. Did I read it, dream it or live it?

This book takes you away into a whole new world. But on close examination, you realise that it is your world.

Great fun to read in the sun.

Don't be scared by the rather daunting title, this book reads beautifully and gives even the casual reader a vivid and lasting sense of what it's like on the front line between Israel & Lebanon. While I am sure that this book is bound to become an important academic work, it's also incredibly engaging and accessible and deserves to be read by a wider audience. Waldman is off to a brilliant start for such a young writer / scholar.

Before reading this book I knew just a bit about the Israeli-Arab conflict. This amazing study examines a little-known but fascinating (and important) aspect of Israel's experience in Lebanon. This study is all the more important because of the current situation between Israel and the Palestinians; Mr Waldman offers a close look at a model that was tried in Lebanon and may offer some hope for progress with the Palestinians. Mr Waldman, who writes from personal experience, writes lucidly and in language that makes it easy for even someone with just a rudimentary background to grasp the nuances of the arrangements in Lebanon and the possible implications for the future.Highly Recommended!

Having myself lived through the war in Lebanon, Ghada Samman's autobiographical book brought back some painful memories. The book vividly recreates the desparation felt by normal people living in shelters and watching their world crumble around them in a senseless cycle of bombings, fighting and cruel murder.

The only optimistic and somewhat refreshing character in the book is the author herself. She never gives up on trying to leave the basement of her home located close to the demarcation line between East and West Beirut. However, as a reader who knows that the war brought only poverty and domination of Lebanon by Syria, I could only be disgusted by the uselesness of all the deaths and suffering. This led me to putting the book away several times only to pick it up again later and reading through the ugly war nightmares.

Finally, I am bemused that this leftist author seems convinced that the civil war was necessary in Lebanon. Civil-wars have no charm and no winner and the writers who instigate and wish for bloody "revolutions" are as guilty as the snipers who kill innocent civilians.

I highly recommend this book for its truthful recreation of the Beirut civil war experience.

First of all...i would like to tell that all of her work is wonderful..it springs from her various truth emotions that makes any of her articles and novels different and distinguishing. this book is a realistic one...do you want to know why? cause she lived the disaster that happend in beirut -the civil war in the seventies-..you only feel that you are reading a novel by a person...but by time when it passes , you will definitely explore that it is a daiary..a daiary that is full of pain ,suffer,revultion from the war and silence,unjustly,envy,avid,hope,faith,different emotions ...they all gather together and make this wonderful book. it also contains these astonished comparisons and thoughts witch makes this book that talks about her life in an apartment next to the holiday-inn hotel...witch we can call the source of the war..you will find what is the difference between the ranks from all directions and sides.especially the pilitical and official...you will know and discover what's behind the bourgoise and poor people......you will know the right meaning of "revolution" and surviving.

To reclaim its legacy as a paragon of plurality, argues a research associate at Georgetown's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Lebanon must first climb out of the morass of "isms" into which it has devolved through decades of civil strife and the meddling of others. Though relatively short, Dagher's book covers a lot of ground. It contains a historical overview of Lebanon's myriad communities as well as an analysis of the development of their mutual distrust. By exposing the nation's self-destructive, inter-communal misconceptions, the author aims to dispel them. Among her allies she numbers no less a figure than Pope John Paul II, whose 1997 visit to Lebanon is stirringly described by Dagher, who shows him standing outside a cathedral (with the sun setting into the Mediterranean as a backdrop) and imploring the country's youth to "bring down the walls erected in the painful past". Those walls, in the author's view, are founded on dogmatic ideologies: sectarianism, Maronitism, fundamentalism, pluralism, and pan-Arabism, to name a few. With unabashed passion, Dagher warns that if Lebanon fails in its multicultural mission, it spells doom not just for a nation uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between Christianity and Islam, but for the entire Levant, which looks to the "country of Cedars" as an oasis in a desert of expanding fanaticism. Her book is a model of engaged journalism, combining thorough research with intensity derived from a personal connection to the subject matter. Quoting numerous Christian and Muslim leaders who stress the importance of preserving diversity, she proves that pluralism is not her ideal alone; it is Lebanon's. Documenting the nation's efforts before and after the civil war to build a model democratic society of diverse sects, she makes a convincing case that the current chronic discord is an aberration. A tougher read for the casual Middle East reader than, say, Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989), but far more penetrating and therefore a must for the expert.

"Bring down the Walls" is a truly unique contribution to the understanding of the sublime mosaic that is the Middle East. The author delves with expert understanding into the complexities of Lebanon's post-war efforts to renew itself and rejuvuate intercommunal relations. Unlike many other writers who approach Lebanon with a snide cyncism and stereotypical images of religious and political groups, author Dahger treats her subject with a compelling sense of humanity, realism and dignity. Combining her honed journalistic skills with an obvious scholarly aptitude, Dagher offers the reader that rare literary opportunity: to learn and enjoy at the same time. The book is replete with incisive first-hand accounts of dramatic efforts to rebuild the shattered spirit of Lebanon, and in particular that of its ancient Christian community. With equal skill and finesse,the reader is effortlessly transported inside the walls of the Vatican to listen in on the great deliberations of the historic 1995 Synod for Lebanon, or to Damascus and the discussion between the US Secretary of State and the President of Syria over Lebanon's future, or to Pope John Paul II's emotional and triumpiant 1997 visit to Lebanon; listen to the author's words, "The Popemobile dived into the bubbling cauldron of the jubliant crowd. It was strewn with rose petals and rice. His face turned red by the sweltering heat of May and by the emotion,the Supreme Pontiff scanned with tenderness and attention the faces and hands lifted toward him. He opened the window and reached out to a a child." (p.189) Not only is this a book sparkling with an abundance of literary gems, but it is an important and timely contribution to the fundamental issue of nation-building. Pluralism, civic society, the role of the military, consenual democracy and institutional governance are seriously treated within the Lebanese experience, but are clearly applicable to any society coping with religious, ethnic and racial diversity. So at one level, "Bring Down the Walls" is an unsurpassed examination of the recent trails and tribulations of the Christians of Lebanon, particularily the Maronite Catholics, at another level, it suggests a blueprint for Lebanon's spiritual and intercommunal revival, and finally it provides a universal message, through the prism of Lebanon's long ordeal of suffering, that speaks to the values of tolerance, diversity and co-existance. I highly recommend "Bring Down the Walls" as an historical account of significant events hitherto ignored, as a political and social analysis of modern day Eastern Christians and their role in the great issues of the Middle East and Islam, and as a moving and personal tribute to Lebanon, a land of martyrs, a land of heros.

Ms. Abinader has written a slice of history that teaches all ofus how a family's desperate fights for survival wins out over thehorrific clashes of clutures. Her book made me realize that what I thought I knew about the Middle East was simplistic. The complexities of race, religion, and geography are rooted in each family's struggle. No better family than this could teach us this lesson.

Elmaz Abinader has created a vivid and insightful biography of three generations of a family's struggle to define itself amid the dislocation and challenges of the first half of the 20th century. Her characters are strongly drawn and distinctive, reflecting values so typical of the Lebanon and other communities where family and kinship are both strength and obstacle.

Elmaz has a particularly strong feeling for her women. They are sometimes overwhelming and tedious in their ability to bear pain, rationalize hurt, support erring spouses, and recognize flaws in others. The men do not hold up as well. Despite some heroic moments in fleeing from persecution and making new lives in America, in general, the men are not as spiritually hardy or as forebearing as the women. There is a strength and lyricism in these pages that goes beyond another ethnic narrative. Elmaz' grounding as a poet has served in well in unfolding the dramatic and incremental movement of these families towards a conclusion that renews again the wheel of life.

Well-done.

Peace, to you and to the Palestinian people, whom this book helps by giving it's readers a glimpse into the suffering those people have had to endure, under the merciless hands of the Israeli Army that seams to get away with all it's terror.

That's all, not surprisingly this book is currently out of stock, although, it shouldn't be, since it's the best so far regarding Middle Eastern phsychology. I own a copy, i just logged on to write this review! Toni is a brave man, too bad he wasn't rewarded well for his honest reporting that has not been affected by mainstream anti Palestinian racist rhetoric.

Peace.

As the author states in the book, official evil lives in the Middle East and this is the story of those who fought it back. This shocking book reveals the pure, unadultered terror the State of Israel inflicted on this sad land. Both the pictures and the prose hit home the brutality of what Israel did (and is doing) to the Palestinian people. Some of the conclusions, written in 1982/83, hauntingly resonate today with a clarity that only those which have withstood the test of time can. Clifton, an award-winning journalist with Newsweek and photographer Cathrine Leroy (also winner of numerous prestigious prizes) have put together more than a documentary account of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the subsequent seige of Beirut and the massacres of Sabra and Shatila. With unquestionable evidence they have produced a scathing commentary on Israel's brutal war of terror waged against an innocent people. After reading this book (which I have done more than 5 times) you can only support the creation of an independent Palestinian state and hope that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (then Defense Minister and architect of the war) finally gets his due in court in Belgium or elsewhere.

Hilal Khashan, Lebanon's leading pollster, has written a cogent book that provided me with deep theoretical and methodological insights during the preparation of my Ph.D. thesis. In fact, many researchers on education employing the content analysis approach to confessional pluralism in Lebanon find this impressive empirical work useful to uncover the complex set of aggregated political factors which are pronounced and perhaps reproduced in this country's educational policies and practices. Judged by the sheer mass of new data and complex analysis which Professor Khashan provides, this book represents a major contribution to the understanding of the subtle and complex nature of the confessional conflict in Lebanon. This monograph has a twofold objective; first, it reviews some interesting methodological issues; and second, it presents the cornucopia of original findings reported by the author. The title of the book signifies a relatively new approach to research on the roots of the corrosive confessional conflict in Lebanon. This approach incorporates a range of theoretical perspectives and original quantitative-qualitative research techniques.... Khashan's work transcends all other works on Lebanon by the quality and comprehensiveness of his data, as well as the sophisticated statistical techniques which he expertly utilizes. This is a truly an unsurpassed book on Lebanese society. It tackles without apology difficult issues which most Lebanese do not like to discuss or even admit. ...Khashan's incorporation of regression analysis filled much of the gap caused by the paucity of empirical data on Lebanon's political viability. Shortage of statistics as those generated by the author in the past tended to stymie research on politics in Lebanon. In this book Khashan has addressed the political arena of Lebanon from a wholly new perspective for which he must be commended. Any observer of post-Tai'f Lebanese politics will readily endorse the author's conclusions and approve of his recommendations. This work shall continue to guide scholars surfeited of research in their own field into provocative horizons. Kamal E. Abouchedid, PhD., Center for Ethnic Studies in Education, The University of Manchester, UK.

With this, his name-making book, Hilal Khashan offers insightful analysis of the Lebanese predicament as manifested by the Lebanese themselves. He is to be commended for his courageous and path-breaking study. Professor Khashan has done what no other specialist on Lebanon has dared or could articulate before -- he has the presented the bitter facts as they are. This is one of the very few books on Lebanon that will guide us to a better understanding of Lebanese politics in the next millenium and beyond!

This book consists of a comprehensive collection of scholerly studies of the Lebanese diaspora over time. It includes socialogical, political,and personal studies of a dirverse group of people and the differant coping skills and strategies that come into play (likely) for any people. In so far as that is the case the book should have broad appeal to any people interested in studies of diaspora. The studies are particularly good because there are comprehensive records for that group and it is fairly recent in history and ongoing. Further, the Lebanese have settled in every continent and under such a vast set of circumstances that this study is of great value from a comparative point of view. In a time when population genetics has become a growing field and with it questions of cultural diffusion are more pressing this study can add insight into such issues that arise in that field of study. Besides the scholerly importance of this book many of papers are of a compelling human interest. It is not just a study of one people, but owing to the great cultural, religious and ethnic diversity of the Lebanese and the wide and varied circumstanve of their migrations this book must touch the hearts of all peoples. Their entry into many countries that were only seeking agricultural laborors and for which their material success provoked laws to ban them and later following their success in many countries by use of the label "asiatic" to prevent them from entry at some point into much of North and South America, and at some point even the United States these facts are things that many of us must be familier, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Italians, Blacks and so on. The spirit to persevere comes over also as a triumphant one and for that reason this book is of value to us all. I recommend it to all and at the very least to schools and libraries. I bought the book for about ... but presently the book does not appear available anymore or at a used price much
higher then the original price. I hope that the publishers will remedy this problem.

Fantatatic book Very good info on the global facts

Unlike many contemporary authors who have never served a day in the military and always write about officers, C.X. Moreau digs into the minds of the enlisted men serving in Beirut during the early 1980s. His description of the antics of a First Sergeant who is out of control is so real - only a former marine could truly relate. The real tragedy in the book is that the U.S. Embassy was bombed in April - why was that bombing not a huge red light for Marine Corps officers and the U.S. intelligence community? I was a little disappointed in Moreau's handling of the embassy incident. There are not just civilians in our embassies - the marine detachments and the Defense Attache Office are very much a part of most U.S. embassies. Overall, the book was excellent. Moreau was not grinding an ax, but telling it like it was. Hats off to a good read and semper fi from a former marine sgt.

A superb book for any would-be leader. A must read for young Commissioned Officers in any branch. You must understand the conflicts an NCO experiences during your absence--the absence may be due to your missing character, your narcissism--your service academy notion that you are always indispensable. Officers are often their own impediment to effectiveness. The young NCO in "Distant Valor" is doing the best he can. The First Sergeant, who has the trust of the Officers, is out of control, and everyone looks the other way because of a few hashmarks. The Junior NCOs are left holding the bag. NO senior enlisted leadership other than a corrupt 1st sergeant and NO Officer leadership until after the fact. Ineffectual Officer Careerism is shown to be the Mortal Sin that is always is. The spit and polish of the Corps is there at long green table of a courts martial proceeding. While the Officers were busy crossing the "t's", no officer wanted the ugly job of backing down the moslem militia chieftain. Read this book and walk a mile in their boots. Put yourself in their shoes. Find out where you fit in this complex weave of characters and then re-evaluate. Where SHOULD you fit? Should your version of leadership change? What is more important? Your Men? Your Country, or your career? Find the Balance... What would Chesty do? What would one of those "potted palms" back at Division" do ?

C. X. Moreau's book is a must read for all Marines--former and active duty--enlisted and OFFICERS! It is not just a story of the Marines' experience in Beirut, but an insightful view of the inner workings of the Corps. It explores the personal relationships between officers and enlisted Marines as well as those between senior staff NCO's and all of the other ranks. It is my opinion that Moreau is making a dynamic statement about the raw courage of the Marines with whom he served as well as voicing his frustration with some of the legitimate problems he encountered. His characters are set forth in an honest manner that not only shows their personal strengths and weaknesses but also provides an insightful view into the strengths and weaknesses of the Marine Corps system itself. This book should be utilized by each Marine for an in-depth objective review of his own current or past performance. I consider Moreau to be a patriotic and loyal Marine whose honesty has been provided for the benefit of today's Marines and a tribute to those courageous Marines with whom he served. Semper Fi, Moreau, from a former Marine officer whose respect you have thoroughly earned!