Kim Ghattas with Richard Engel: The Best Kind of American

On January 18, 1984, Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University of Beirut, was assassinated outside his office. His murder, in the wake of the bombing of the US Marines’ barracks, Palestinian guerrilla warfare, and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, was just one more shocking headline in a city ravaged by the chaos of nine years of war. There was no investigation. Four decades later, the question of who killed Kerr, and why, is still not fully resolved.

Kerr’s forgotten assassination is the starting point for Emmy Award-winning journalist and author Kim Ghattas’ new book, The Best Kind of American: A True Story of Murder, War, and America’s Undoing in the Middle East. Part true-crime investigation, part deeply human saga, it is “both a geopolitical whodunit and a masterful investigative history of the forces that have torn apart Lebanon for the past 50 years” (Scott Anderson). Weaving together the family’s story with that of Lebanon’s warlords and peacemakers, Hezbollah hostage takers and Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and American presidents from Reagan to Trump, Ghattas also tells the definitive story of how Beirut came to be the point of origin for the policies and people who went on to shape the Middle East for decades.

In a fascinating and illuminating conversation with NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel, Ghattas takes us behind the scenes of her investigation: from a decades-old murder mystery to the hidden histories and unfinished business of Lebanon’s civil war. Together, they explore what Malcolm Kerr’s assassination reveals about the forces that transformed Beirut, reshaped the Middle East, and continue to reverberate through the region today.

“A miraculous achievement. Ghattas takes you inside a murder mystery and then reveals, layer upon layer, the maddening complexity of the ongoing wars of the Middle East. This is essential reading.” — Kai Bird, author American Prometheus

“Brilliant, disturbing, honest, thoughtful, and thought-provoking, this is the best kind of book on the Middle East. Unlike many books on the region, it does not take sides, is not ideological or self-righteous. Kim Ghattas allows each character, even the ‘villains,’ space and voice, giving the reader a chance to try and understand them and not simply judge.” — Azar Nafis, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran