In Pity the Nation, Robert Fisk's epic tome about the formation and disintegration of Lebanon, Fisk recalls reading a faded 1950s newspaper story in which a European visitor writes of being wowed by the typical allures of the "Switzerland of the Middle East," while he glosses over a deadly anti-government protest - the beginning of Lebanon's first civil war - as the birth pangs of a young democracy.
National Geographic writer Don Belt, who has penned a knowing portrait of Syria for the magazine's November issue, seems determined to avoid missing such a historical boat. His wide-ranging story about the precariously perched Bashar al-Assad regime has impressed even Syria News Wire - never happy with carpetbagging foreign correspondents - which has called it "the best article on Syria in a decade."
