t met. Friedman could not keep from laughing at this point of culture shock. The taxi driver had mistaken him for a new arrival to the Middle East, not as one already hardened to the daily grind of months living amidst Lebanese bombings and torture scenes. Friedman told the driver categorically "Look I just came from Beirut" suggesting that he could not even be agitated by this poor display of petty bullying.
One of the most remarkable qualities of Friedman's book is its open-handed fairness. In the prologue Friedman contends that the Israelis and Arabs are simultaneously undergoing transition and although they do not admit it to one another, they share the same identity crisis (9). From Beruit to Jerusalem is wildly readable precisely because Friedman attempts to be comprehensive and just. His strategy leads him into frequent excursions into his first-hand experiences told with a wry wit seasoned by years of saturation in experiencing both the greatness and travesties of Middle Eastern life. His early report on the taxi driver's welcome marks the front-seat style Friedman adopts. Not only does this approach allow the perplexing incongruities of the Middle East to be humanized for a Western audience but it also offers a dramatic immediacy which forces the reader to care as passionately about Friedman's topic as he himself does. His own self-proclaimed fanatical curiosity about Middle Eastern affairs led Friedman to attend St. Antony's College in Oxford, a leading center for Jewish-Arab studies, to witness the Lebanese Civil War and Israeli unrest. His dedication to seeing all sides of the truth even when they disrupt his own prior convictions produces superb craftsmanship. Friedman's early drastic realization that Israel was not "the Jewish summer camp of his youth" shapes the book and creates a voracious appetite within his readers for further unveilings.
From Beruit to Jerusalem is marked by its mission to educat...