Levant is a book that explores cities like Smyrna, Alexandria, and Beirut when they served as windows to the world, offering escape from nationality and tradition, becoming centers of wealth, pleasure, and freedom. Using unpublished family documents, Philip Mansel describes their colorful and contradictory history, from the beginning of the French alliance with the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century to their decline in the mid-20th century. Smyrna burned, Alexandria became Egyptian, Beirut was scarred by civil war.