Regarding my entry on Arab political and literary memoirs. Joseph asked why I did not include Taha Husayn's Al-Ayyam which is an important piece of Arab literature. This was not an exhaustive list: I wrote it at the spur of the moment, and did not sit down and include all that is to be included. There were other important memoirs that I did not include: like the memoirs of Yusuf Salamah (titled Haddathani Yusuf S.), which is one of my favorite memoirs of all time, full of irony and wit. I did not include Luwis Al-Hajj (former editor at the right-wing An-Nahar) which is essential to understand Lebanese politics and journalism, and the link between politicians and newspapers in Lebanon--how An-Nahar for example would edit Pierre Gemayyel's statements to make them less sectarian and less bigoted against Muslims. I did not include memoirs written by Arabs in English. Mouin asked me about Akram Hurani's memoir. Excellent question, Mouin. These are the most unusual memoirs: very massive, in 4 volumes and each volume in some 900 pages (more than 3500 pages in total). Would I be mistaken in saying that they are the most massive memoirs there are ever? I know of no bigger memoirs. They were written just before the death of Akram Hurani, this man who shaped so much of Syrian and Arab politics for decades, and who angered and provoked Nasser so much. I recommend very much to scholars and historians those memoirs although they are outrageously expensive, and privately funded (but carries the imprint of Madbuli in Cairo), and not easy to obtain (found a copy at a bookshop in London). What is unusual about them is that they really are not memoirs, only: Hurani had so much research help from his daughter and others, and thus can be used as an important historical reference. For example, he would be talking about his visit to Aleppo in the 1940s, and then would say: and the local newspaper in Aleppo said this about this visit, and then the newspaper in Beirut said this about my speech, etc. But they cover such an important period by one of the keenest observers of Arab politics, and it is also essential for understanding the coflictual and bizarre world of the Ba`th Party.