Now available in paperback, Legacy of the Prophetis a sweeping, first-person account of the transformation in the style and message of Islamic politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century. As terrorism floods our headlines, this book offers a rare but much-needed counterpoint: it shows that Islamic activists have increasingly renounced violence in order to form political parties, engage in grass-roots work, and enter into civil society to bring about peaceful reform in their authoritarian societies. Drawing on his years of reporting in more than a dozen countries of the Muslim world,...

"Wonderful . . . One of the finest memoirs I've read." -- Philip Caputo, Washington Post
In the summer of 2006, racing through Lebanon to report on the Israeli invasion, Anthony Shadid found himself in his family's ancestral hometown of Marjayoun. There, he discovered his great-grandfather's once magnificent estate in near ruins, devastated by war. One year later, Shadid returned to Marjayoun, not to chronicle the violence, but to rebuild in its wake.
So begins the story of a battle-scarred home and a journalist's wounded spirit, and of how reconstructing the one came to...