Come with Me from Lebanon: An American Family Odyssey

Kerr's husband, Malcolm, president of American University of Beirut, was killed in his office on Jan. 18, 1984, by assassins who were never identified. This book grew out of the author's journal. She delves relatively little into politics but gives a flavor of a family's affection for Lebanon and the Arab world, as well as their own stories. In 1954, the author met her husband-to-be on her junior year abroad at the AUB; the couple spent 20 years at UCLA beginning in 1962, where they raised a family. In the late 1950s, when some saw Lebanon as a possible democratic model, Malcolm Kerr warned that it needed renewal; Lebanon was in greater turmoil in 1981 after Israeli attacks, but Kerr couldn't resist the opportunity to return to the institution and country he loved. While the author, who coordinates the Fulbright program at UCLA, might have trimmed some of her journal entries, this is a sensitively written account. Photos not seen by PW. (Nov.)