Today Syria is a country known for all the wrong reasons: civil war, vicious sectarianism, and major humanitarian crisis. But how did this once rich, multi-cultural society end up as the site of one of the twenty-first century’s most devastating and brutal conflicts?
In this incisive book, internationally renowned Syria expert David Lesch takes the readeron an illuminating journey through the last hundred years of Syrian history – from theend of the Ottoman empire through to the current civil war. The Syria he reveals is afractured mosaic, whose identity (or lack thereof) has played a crucial part in itstrajectory over the past century. Only once the complexities and challenges of Syria’shistory are understood can this pivotal country in the Middle East begin to rebuild andheal.
