A Million Steps: Discovering the Lebanon Mountain Trail
By Hana El-Hibri
2011, Interlink, 978-1-56656-839-5, $60 hb.
Reviewed by Alia Yuni on October 1, 2012
The Lebanon Mountain Trail runs 440 kilometers (275 mi) from the far north to the far south of the country and has become one of the most recognized eco-tourism and environmental-preservation missions in the Middle East. This first-person account of a group journey along the entire route, through Lebanon’s villages, snowcapped mountains and thousands of years of history, is light on text and heavy on photos by Norbert Schiller. While it is a lovely introduction to Lebanon, the photos tend be landscapes that don’t necessarily let us know where we are—it could be any beautiful mountain region in the world—and the close-ups of faces also don’t offer any context. Still, it will make many want to put on their hiking boots.