Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online Volume 1, Issue 1 | Page 80

2/2/2016

Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online

destroyed by the regional fallout of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. In any event, when Syrian tutelage restored peace of a kind after 1990, the Lebanese
state also returned with a vengeance as little more than a mechanism for divvying up sectarian shares (p. 234).
Whether one agrees with Harris’s interpretations and judgments, he offers a historical context and a set of arguments for considering the past and
present of this complex, divided and vulnerable country. Sandwiched as it is between the regional superpower (Israel) and the post-2011 Syrian
volcano, Lebanon’s survival may be due more to inertia than to any innate inner strength or coherence. Harris’s account offers much food for
thought, and his book is suitable for advanced students including its comprehensive chronology and bibliography.

Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online

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