With the West's economic and security interests increasingly at stake in the Middle East, it is impossible to ignore Lebanon - a nation divided and tormented by the interplay between the West and the Arab world. Sandra Mackey delineates the multifarious culture that is Lebanon; stripping away the complex stigmas of its politics, she brings each component into focus, explaining the conflicts between Sunni and Shia, Maronites and Druze, Christian and Muslim, Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Lebanon and Palestine, and Syria and Lebanon. Covering Lebanon's history through the civil war of 1975-89 and with a new introduction on recent developments, Mackey lays the groundwork needed to comprehend this ill-understood country.

About the Author

Journalist SANDRA MACKEY is the author of The Saudis (ISBN 0 393 32417 6)

Reviews

"a close-up look at Saudi social and public life" (The Sunday Times), and The Reckoning (ISBN 0 393 32428 1), which "provide[s] a good dose of the factual and analytical material so absent from our daily diet of news bulletins" (The Times Literary Supplement). "Draws a lucid map of an apparently impossible complexity." Newsday"