LEBANON From ITS ORIGINS: Ancient Memory to Unfinished Sovereignty

LEBANON FROM ITS ORIGINS From Ancient Memory to Unfinished Sovereignty. >Lebanon from Its Origins: From Ancient Memory to Unfinished Sovereignty is a sweeping, lucid, and deeply reflective history of a country whose destiny cannot be reduced to a border, a war, or a single community. From the Phoenician coast and the refuge of Mount Lebanon to the creation of Greater Lebanon, the National Pact, civil war, foreign interventions, financial collapse, and the continuing struggle for sovereignty, Najib A. Jabre traces the long arc of a nation that has endured without ever ceasing to question itself. Written with historical breadth, literary restraint, and political clarity, this book presents Lebanon not merely as a place, but as both memory and unfinished project. It explores a land shaped by ancient continuities, communal fears, cultural brilliance, fragile compromises, and repeated assaults on state authority. Maronites, Sunnis, Shiites, Druze, and Lebanon's many other communities appear here not as fixed blocs, but as living histories-each carrying hopes, wounds, and responsibilities inseparable from the fate of the republic. At once a historical essay, a meditation on coexistence, and a political inquiry into unfinished sovereignty, Lebanon from Its Origins is written for readers who seek more than a chronology of events.It invites them to understand why Lebanon has survived, why it has suffered, and why its future still depends on the difficult transformation of memory into citizenship, protection into equality, and survival into a common political home. It also advances several theses that may contribute to rethinking and rebuilding the Lebanese state and its institutions on firmer, more sovereign foundations. Elegant, rigorous, and profoundly timely, this book offers a rare synthesis for anyone seeking to understand Lebanon beyond the headlines. An essential synthesis for understanding Lebanon in its historical, political, and human depth.