About the Author

Bruce McLaren is an Australian from rural New South Wales, who left home and just kept on going. He has an academic background in the archaeology and ancient history of the Middle East and Central Asia, regions in which he has both travelled and worked extensively. McLaren received his doctorate in Middle Eastern Archaeology at the University of Sydney and published the first examination of the military architecture of Bronze Age Jordan in 2003. He has excavated at numerous sites across the Middle East, dating from the Neolithic to the Islamic Periods, and is intimately acquainted with the ancient and modern history of Syria. McLaren has always considered Syria to be the most mysterious and wondrous of lands and used to entertain serious thoughts of living out his days in Damascus. Instead, he now resides in the United States, where he sadly views events in the Syrian land that he loves from afar.