When Magic Failed: A Memoir of a Lebanese Childhood, Caught Between East and West

As one of the most profound and insightful scholars of the Middle East, Fouad Ajami's sensibility was powerfully shaped by his childhood and youth in Lebanon in the '50s and '60s. The time was a transitional one—not only for the Middle East, but for America and the world. Lebanon in this era was just coming into its own as a cosmopolitan destination of the international jet set as well as earnest ...