The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria | 
| Author: David W. Lesch
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 622695
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0300109911
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.91042
EAN: 9780300109917
ASIN: 0300109911
Publication Date: November 11, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: excellent condition
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Product Description
Is Syria a rogue state? How important is it to the fates of Iraq, Iran, Israel, and Lebanon? Based on unique and extraordinary access to Syria’s President Bashar al-Asad, his circle, and his family, this book tells Syria’s inside story. David W. Lesch presents the essential account of this country and its enigmatic leader at a critical juncture in the history of the Middle East.
Syria has been called the crossroads of civilization for millennia. Lately, however, it is a nation more in the crosshairs than the crossroads. From the U.S. perspective, Syria is on the wrong side of history with respect to Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, the global war on terrorism, and the growth of democracy in the Middle East. Bashar al-Asad assumed the presidency in 2000 after the long reign of his father, Hafiz al-Asad, and soon encountered momentous regional and international events. Bashar’s efforts to integrate his country into this changing environment without being coerced have met with some success and some failure. The fate of Syria, very much tied to its young ophthalmologist-turned-president, will profoundly affect what type of Middle East emerges in the near future.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Worshipping Assad November 15, 2007
I am still taken aback and quite frankly a little confused by the lengths that Prof. Lesch goes to in order to defend the Assad regime. Every description of some horrible event is followed up by a lengthy rationalization complete with a plethora of quotes from regime figures. I would expect there to be analysis, but every "analysis" following some act or trait describing the Syrian political culture in a way that most of the world would find repugnant is followed up some explanation that favors the regime. What confuses me is how a professor from a US social sciences department can write something that would appear to have come out of Pravda. I mean when he ought to be striving for the ideal of objectivity, he appears to be striving to become part of the inner circle.
I keep picking the book back up again, due to my compulsion to finish a book that I have started, only to put it down again after becoming disturbed by his complete lack of scholarly integrity. I would simply blow it off and skip the regime quotes for the geopolitical sections, but I am just to distracted by this who you know bias thing. I honestly don't your run of the mill cult of personality.
If you still don't believe that Lesch could be a Baathist, let me tell you that I bought the book at a book fair in front of the Assad library of Damascus back in September.
An apologetic praise of the Syrian regime May 22, 2007
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
As in Seale and other Western intellectuals who take off to Syria to write a book there, the generosity and good treatment of the regime toward these people make them fall in love with the regime. You can tell from the very first page when Lesch was very much impressed when Assad replied to his emails.
Needless to say, I couldn't finish this book due to the enormous amount of praise that Lesch hails on the young Syrian president, the Damascus Lion. All that is good in Syria came from Assad and all that is evil came from Syria's enemies in the West. According to this book, the good-willed, kind-hearted Assad is sincerely planning to modernize and democratize Syria, had it not been for the Western anti-Syrian conspiracies that have so far thwarted all such attempts. What an analysis.
Also like the reviewer EDowson (MD) wrote here before me, there is no information about Syria. Perhaps if the author had access to some numbers, like the percentage of people living in poverty while Assad and his group enjoy accumulating enormous wealth, or the number of years anti-Assad opposition figures have spent in the prisons of the Syrian regime, perhaps then Lesch would have changed his opinion a bit. Most important of all, when Lesch writes about the lack of democracy and the nature of the tyrannical regime in Damascus, he does so without even blinking. As if Syria is destined to live under dictatorship and that the dictator himself should be given the chance to renounce his unlimited powers and initiate change. Don't buy this book!
 Jibes with reality January 25, 2007
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
I met Syrians of all walks of life when I visited the country earlier this year, and while I learned something from all of them I was especially appreciative of the few who were brave enough to give me a candid assessment of the regime there.
This book fits with what I saw and heard, and has filled in many of the blanks in my understanding of the country. If you really want to understand Syria I suggest you get on a plane and go there. If you can't do that this book is a good second choice.
A bit of an exaggeration!!! September 29, 2006
49 out of 64 found this review helpful
Perhaps the author should have also made references to these 'somber' historical facts:
Israel invaded Egypt in 1956 and made rapid progress across the Sinai Peninsula towards the Canal Zone in less than one week. (There are many literatures that speak of three days.)
Israel defeated four armies in 1967 (third Arab Israeli War) also known as Six Day's war.
The Fourth Arab Israeli War - Yom Kippur War in 1973 - Israel fought a coalition of Arab Nations led by Egypt and Syria and defeated them in ten days.(Despite the political acrimonies that portrayed Sadat (another Lion!!!) 'triumphant').
The Golan Height is still under Israel's flag. (Right!?)
However, why the legend "Lion" has been restricted to Damascus?
Why the book was not entitled "The New Lion of Syria.....???
Can Mr.Lesch give us an explanation?
A bit more criticism, and you could call it fawning August 9, 2006
9 out of 26 found this review helpful
I skimmed through this truckling tome last night and was delighted to encounter more run-on sentences than I have read in the entirety of the past two months. Run-ons are a favorite of mine.
Less impressed was I with how the good Professor Lesch covered Mr. Asad and modern Syria. I picked up the book at my local Books-a-Million in the hopes of learning more about Syria. Beyond a reminder of the percentage of Alawites in the country, I didn't learn much at all. In fact, I think the "take-home message" is that the author is madly in love with his subject, at least in that intellectual manner that some academics evince for their specialties.
An ancillary message from the book is that the Bush Administration is incompetent and may have ruined modern Syria's chances of joining the rest of the world. This, despite the noble efforts of the fine Arabists at the State Department to convince the Bush Administration of the errors of its Zionist, neo-conservative ways.
And, of course, Syria and its goofy-looking Lion King have absolutely nothing to do with the insurgency in Iraq. Proof of this, in Lesch's curiously contorted synapses, lies in the Bush Administration's refusal to provide the Syrians with US intelligence on the insurgency. I mean, if I were in charge of US intelligence, I would certainly let my enemies know exactly what I know about their activities. That'd show 'em!
In "The New Lion," Professor Lesch successfully surmounts his often-faltering mastery of idiom and sentence structure to scale the pinnacle of that renouned and beloved genre, the fluff bio. If this work contains criticism of Assad, as the author repeatedly claims, I would certainly hate to to read a book that's full of paeans.
Then again, if I'm ever a slightly bloodthirsty tyrant with a genocidal streak, maybe Lesch could polish some apples for me. I think I'd choose someone with better writing skills, though.
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