Children of immigrants maintain an ever-shifting balance between their parents’ culture and America’s, a process that involves both conflict and comedy. Diana Abu-Jaber lived this balancing act, and writes about it with affection.

"Every fresh marvel has there its unveiling," wrote Ibn Battuta about Alexandria, and the greatest was the Pharos, the first and tallest lighthouse ever built. The astonishing structure guided seafarers for 1500 years, and came to symbolize the city.

For an eight-year-old boy, summer in Alexandria meant endless delights: the beach, tea and cake on the Corniche, double-decker streetcars. But just getting there from Ciaro was half the fun, for it meant a trip in the yellow Flxible bus.

On the sweeping grasslands of central Mongolia stand stones inscribed in runic Turkic: "…the khagans Bumin and Ishtemi…having become masters of the Turkic people…established and ruled its empire and fixed the law of the country."

Historical treasures left by past cultures—from Phoenicians through Umayyads to French—are part of the landscape of Lebanon. Rediscovering and restoring them, for Lebanese and visitors alike, is part of the country’s post-war reconstruction.

The intellectual focus of the ancient world was the Library at Alexandria. Now a modern-day successor, an ambitious international center for research and scholarship, is rising in the same city.