Book Talk with Tylor Brand

Come join Middle Eastern Studies alumnus Dr. Tylor Brand for a discussion of his new book, Famine Worlds: Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon’s Great War (Stanford University Press, 2023). Set in World War I, the book details the calamities that devastated lands that would become Lebanon in the war's aftermath. With war came famine, and with famine came unspeakable suffering, starvation, and mass death. For nearly four years the deadly crisis reshaped society, killing untold thousands and transforming how people lived, how they interacted, and even how they saw the world around them. Famine Worlds peers out at the famine through their eyes, from the perspectives of wealthy merchants and the dwindling middle classes, and finally to those perishing in the streets. In doing so, it shows how individual struggles had social effects. The famine altered beliefs and behaviors, and those in turn influenced social relationships, policies, and even the historical memory of generations to come.