What do Arab-Americans think of traditional American values? How do they perceive their treatment as new immigrants? Have they been seriously alienated from the dominant culture? The Development of Arab-American Identity offers an account of the Arab-American experience from the early immigration to the present day. After the historical background has been set, the essays in this book deal with the struggle for religious, political, cultural, and social identity, all of which involve coping with unconscious and conscious stereotyping and marginalization of Arabs and Arab-Americans.

"I know nothing about death, absolutely nothing," asserts the narrator of this inventive autobiographical novel. Yet he can't stop thinking about it. Detached from life in Los Angeles and his past in Australia, uncomfortable around other humans, he researches death on the Internet; mulls over distant and intimate stories of suicides, serial killers, and "natural deaths"; and wanders about LA's Holy Cross Cemetery. He's looking for answers, all the while formulating his own disquieting philosophies.

Within this dizzying investigation into the mystery of death is another mystery: who is the companion igniting these memories? This enigmatic novel blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction, story and eulogy, poetry and obituary. Wry yet somber, astringent yet tender, The Disintegrations confronts both the impossibility of understanding death and the timeless longing for immortality.