" F]illed with rare encounters with Syria's oldest, most elite families. Critics of anthropology's taste for exoticism and marginality will savor this study of upper-class Damascus, a world that is urbane and cosmopolitan, yet in many ways as remote as the settings in which the best ethnography has traditionally been done.... Written] with a nuanced appreciation of the cultural forms in question and how Damascenes themselves think, talk about, and create them." --Andrew Shryock

In contemporary urban Syria, debates about the representation, preservation, and restoration of the Old...