House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

When Anthony Shadid-one of four New York Times reporters captured in Libya as the region erupted-was freed, he went home, not to Boston, Beirut, or Oklahoma, where he was raised by his Lebanese American family, but to an ancient estate built by his great-grandfather, a place filled with memories of a lost era when the Middle East was a world of grace, grandeur, and unexpected departures. For two years previous, Shadid had worked to reconstruct the house and restore his spirit after both had...