In 1952, when American college teachers John and Mildred Adams with their two small children sailed past the Statue of Liberty on their way to Egypt and a new, unpredictable life, they were trembling with excitement. At last, a chance to see the world Something of that thrill persisted through their eight eventful years in the Middle East: in Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon. Those years in the Middle East were a brief period of relative stability, prosperity, and friendliness toward the West, just before the whole area was violently torn apart by wars and terrorism. In that almost Golden Age, traditional patterns of culture-manners, customs, political and social institutions, loyalties, taboos, ideals, ethical standards, religious beliefs-were clearer than they can be in a time of crisis and disruption like ours. This book's story of the Adams family's life in that Middle East of half a century ago is dramatically timely today. Many Americans are sick of the apparently endless violence and terrorism in the Middle and Near East and in other places (including the United States) where Islamic cultures clash with non-Islamic ones-conflict in most of which the United States is deeply involved. "How did we get into this mess?" they ask, "and how will it end?" Historians point to the ignorance of Americans, including our leaders, about the Middle and Near East and Islam and to the disastrous consequences of that ignorance. They tell us that stability and peace will never come to those conflicted areas unless that ignorance is replaced by understanding, respect, and good will. Sharing in the Adams family's story the reader can gain that valuable insight and consequently, perhaps, sympathy and goodwill for all the people involved.