Lebanon 1860-1960 ― A Century of Myth And Politics

The Lebanon crisis of 1958, which resulted in the landing of US Marines in Beirut, is often interpreted in terms of upheavals of Nasserite pan-Arabism challenging US hegemony or in terms Cold War politics. While not dismissing in toto the value of such interpretations, Kanaan (history, St Joseph's U., Lebanon) seeks the roots of the crisis in the failure of the Christian Maronite, Muslim Sunni, and Muslim Druze communities to find consensus on the question of Lebanon's national identity and the proclivity of the communities, particularly the Maronites, to seek the involvement of external forces during times of crisis. In support of this argument, she examines the historical factors that influenced the construction of community and national identities in the century leading up to the crisis. Distributed in the US by Palgrave Macmillan. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Claude Kanaan is a History Professor at St Joseph University in Beirut. She completed a doctorate on Lebanon 1958 in 1995 at the School of African and Oriental Studies, London University.