Cursed is the Peacemaker: The American Diplomat vs. the Israeli General,
Beirut, 1982

This is the story of America's most extraordinary diplomat and master of high-stakes crisis diplomacy, Philip Habib. It reveals for the first time how he worked out a peaceful end to the 1982 Israeli siege of Beirut.

The architect of the siege was Israel's then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. While Sharon raced to conclude the siege violently, Habib raced to conclude it peacefully. Thwarted at every turn and risking his life to fight impossible odds, Habib pulled off what George Shultz calls a miracle.

The story took seven years to piece together from thousands of pages of declassified documents and over 150 hours of interviews with participants. Though exhaustively researched and documented, it reads like a novel.