This emphatically is not a book about the territory now constituting Syria but about an era when the terms Lebanon and Syria were used in a politically incorrect inept way even by the foreign powers dominating the region. Leary's son, Lewis Gaston Leary Jr. (1877-1951) carried on the family literary tradition and was the William Rand Kenan Professor English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Extensive family papers are in the archives there. Leary taught at what is now the American University in Beirut and during that time traveled extensively in the Middle East. He is a reminder that despite their troubles what are now Lebanon and Syria are full of visual joy.