A Million Steps: Discovering the Lebanon Mountain Trail
Alia Yuni
Hana El-Hibri
2011, Interlink, 978-1-56656-839-5, $60 hb.
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.
You may also be interested in...
Nuha Alshaar’s Essay Compilation Muslim Sicily—Our Book Review
What emerges from this volume by Nuha Alshaar, a professor of Arabic literature and Islamic studies, is a rounded picture of Sicily as a site of cultural exchange that shaped the medieval Mediterranean.
The Vanishing Sea by Artist Dinara Mirtalipova—Our Book Review
How often do we take nature for granted, assuming it will never vanish? In US-based folk illustrator Dinara Mirtalipova’s new children’s book, a sea is the main character: the one that provides livelihood and prosperity, until humans’ poor choices cause its demise.