Thomas S. Kidd

In this remarkable book, Ussama Makdisi offers a marvelously subtle analysis of American missionary work in nineteenth-century Syria, and just as importantly, the Syrian Maronite reaction to the missionaries’ overtures. Although much of the work on American missions has focused primarily on the missionaries, Makdisi meticulously reconstructs the cultural collision that transpired in Syria, and shows how the collision perplexed and transformed the religious assumptions of both sides. This book is now the field’s best micro-history of the early Protestant missionary encounter.