HISTORY / MIDDLE EAST STUDIES / POLITICS

LEBANON

A SHATTERED COUNTRY
Myths and Realities of the Wars in Lebanon

Revised Edition

Elizabeth Picard
translated by Franklin Philip

When first published by Holmes & Meier in 1996, Lebanon: A Shattered Country was hailed as a brilliant study of the evolution of that country, from before its founding and into the mid-1990s. With precision and impartiality, Picard analyses the causes and effects of the civil wars that racked Lebanon from 1975 to 1990—what and who were destroyed, which powers have predominated, and to whose benefit—and she explores realistic solutions to the conflict. In this revised and expanded edition the author assesses the ten years of post-war physical and political reconstruction in the country and adds a new chapter that deals with the regional scene, particularly negotiations with Israel and relations with Syria, and shows clearly the price Lebanon has paid for its international survival.

"What Picard calls 'the war that dared not speak its name' devastated land and people, ending in 1990 as illogically as it had begun. The devastation was both physical and psychological, introducing the term 'Lebanonization' into politics to denote a state in disarray. . . and victimized by outside forces. The interplay of these forces and their effect on Lebanese social balance are brilliantly analyzed in Picard's insightful study."
—Choice

"A well-crafted book, dense with pertinent and lively details, but broad in scope. . . . Picard is always keen and exacting in stating and substantiating some of the curious and seemingly inconsistent realities of Lebanon."
—Middle East Journal

"A compact, readable account that is. . . original and persuasive. I learned many new and interesting things from this book, and I know of no other books that take in Lebanon so completely at so high an intellectual level."
—Richard Bulliet
Director, The Middle East Institute (Columbia University)

Elizabeth Picard is a research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France. She worked and lived in the Middle East for several years and directed the French Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient Contemporain in Beirut and Amman from 1997 to 2000. She writes extensively about security and identity politics in the Middle East.