At the centre of Ussama Makdisi's book is the story of As'ad Shidyaq, one of the few converts made by the first American Protestant missionaries who arrived in Lebanon in the 1820s. A member of a prominent Maronite family, he came to accept the Americans' uncompromising evangelical message. Persecuted by the Maronite authorities for betraying his community's faith, he was imprisoned, tortured and died in prison. The missionaries saw him as a Christian martyr. Makdisi, nephew of Edward Said and professor of Arab Studies at Rice University, sets this simple story in its historical, social and religious context, of whose Ottoman and Lebanese aspects the Americans were almost entirely ignorant. They themselves were conditioned by the experience of missionary work among the Indian peoples of an expanding United States, which, as Makdisi shows, coloured the Americans' attitude to the Maronite and other religious communities of the Middle East. For them Islam was the great enemy, the oriental Churches were hopelessly corrupt, and only conversion to the pure evangelical faith could save them. Their total failure to appreciate the delicate balance of communities and religions in the region lay behind As'ad's death and their mission's failure. Yet their work was not without consequence. Among their converts Butrus al-Bustani did not share their exclusive attitude. True evangelism, he believed, required openness to others: he saw no need for a conflict between Christianity and Islam. In 1860 he wrote a Life of As'ad Shidyaq, retrieving a memory that the Maronite Church had tried to bury. Defending individual conscience, Bustani was less concerned to present his subject as a martyr than to revive As'ad's own assertion that he could be both evangelical and Maronite. His retelling of the story served to express his own conviction that religious diversity could be the basis of a liberal society in which Church and State should be separated. After the inter-communal violence in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860, Bustani founded a school where students were taught to respect religious difference, reject proselytism and make patriotism the basis of modern life. It was some time before the American missionaries caught up with that enlightened approach; but in time aggressive evangelisation was transformed into the continuing educational work of the American University of Beirut. Makdisi's thoroughly researched and attractively written book tells again a story some would still prefer not to hear. Aware of persisting American imperialism, nowhere more obvious than in the Middle East, he expresses the hope that his book, a welcome addition to the series The United States in the World, may help to counter the view of many Americans that their country has an exceptional vocation to bring civilisation to the rest of the world – a view unquestioned by those who, in the early stages of American involvement in the Middle East, converted the unfortunate As'ad.