Beauty And The East

IF you like history and travel, then you could do a lot worse than get hold of a copy of a book I picked up for 99p from a branch of Oxfam (cannot recall which branch, but it might have been in Tunbridge Wells).
Colin Thubron spent four months walking through Lebanon in 1967 around the time of the Six-Day War.
The book's title, The Hills Of Adonis, refers to a Greek god of beauty who supposedly inhabited Lebanon's hills until he was killed by a wild boar.

The Hill's of Adonis - 2008 reprint by Vintage

Ironically, much of what Thubron writes about Adonis, especially of people believing the god annually died and was reborn, is dismissed by modern scholars.
But there is plenty of real Near East history here, starting from before the arrival of the Phoenicians, continuing through later conquerors including Byzantines, Arabs and Crusaders, and concluding with Lebanon's (very) limited involvement in the Six-Day War.
Naturally there is also much travelogue material, with Thubron finding the locals, whether Christian, Druze or Muslim. to be almost universally friendly before the Israeli-Arab conflict, but turning to hostility - at least from Muslims - during and after the war.
I had a similar experience of a seeming change in attitudes when I visited Jordan just before 9/11 and Tunisia just after it (although admittedly they are too somewhat different countries).
Thubron is a multi-prize-winning author, and apart from some purple patches of philosophy, I found The Hills of Adonis a rattling good read.