The Arsonists’ City (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021) by Hala Alyan (BA ’08).
This family saga centered on their struggles to save the ancestral home in Beirut tells the story of both a family and a region in conflict. The fragile ties that hold this extensive family together are imperiled by lost loves, bitter jealousies, abandoned passions, and deep-set shame—all exacerbated by Beirut’s legacy of war and disaster, overwhelming flow of refugees, religious tension, and political unrest. Alyan shows us that “fiction is often the best filter for the real world around us.”
The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking (Wiley, 2018) by Saifedean Ammous, PhD (BEN ’03).
In his bestselling book, Ammous demonstrates how Bitcoin grew to be the answer to what many see as a world plagued by centralization. He discusses the history of money, how Bitcoin works, and how it can be used instead of fiat currency. He covers the idea of trustless systems, and why this is such a revolutionary idea in the modern history of money, with the potential to generate many new social ideas in the digital age. Bitcoin also undermines the idea of central banks planning the economic cycle via interest rates. The author considers the idea of Bitcoin as a new form of the global gold standard, which can be used on a supranational basis to settle payments and as a nation’s reserve asset.
Psychoanalysis and the Love of Arabic: Hall of Mirrors (Edinburgh University Press, 2020)
Psychoanalysis and the Love of Arabic: Hall of Mirrors (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) by Nadia Bou Ali reorients the debates around Arabic and global modernity in relation to psychoanalysis, capitalism, and universality. The study offers the first psychoanalytic reading of 19th century works written during the Nahda movement by Ahmad Faris Shidyaq (1805–87) and Butrus al-Bustani (1819–83). It shows how a curious relationship was forged between language and politics–one driven by both a desire for, and anxiety about, modernity. In analyzing the abstractness of national belonging as belonging to the language, author Bou Ali considers why modern Arabic grammarians became ideated as a ‘mirror of the nation’.
Hundred Page 5G Book: In-Depth Coverage of 5G System Engineering and Architecture (self-published, 2020) by Bassem Abi-Farah (BEN ’94).
Fifth Generation (5G) is expected to have a socio-economic impact that will radically advance mobile telecommunications. Consistently ranked as a bestseller in several Amazon marketplaces, this book provides in-depth knowledge and understanding of 5G technologies and network architecture, while serving as a guide to 5G’s many new business opportunities. https://www.amazon. ca/dp/B08P7T47NY
And So We Drive On (Eye on the East, 2020) by Marina Chamma (BA ‘02).
This collection of stories inspired by Lebanon and Beirut confirms the city’s status as a place “many of us love to hate and hate that we love.” Here, the experiences of some are ultimately the stories of all. They are a reflection that no matter what happens to us, “we as human beings move on. We drive on and life, somehow, drives along with us.”