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Mirror of the Arab World: Lebanon in Conflict | 
 enlarge | Author: Sandra Mackey
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $12.95
You Save: $13.00 (50%)
New (39) Used (12) from $12.10
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 287064
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 039306218X
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.9204
EAN: 9780393062182
ASIN: 039306218X
Publication Date: March 24, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
How the recent history of Lebanon provides insight into the many trials currently facing the larger Arab community.
It is crucial to the interests of the West to grasp the complexities of the Arab world. In this clear, concise volume, Sandra Mackey provides a unique view of this tortured and tortuous region through the lens of Lebanon.
A small, fractured country at the gateway of the Arab east, Lebanon signals the challenges that the Arab world poses to itself and to the West. As Mackey vividly demonstrates, the Lebanese have experienced every issue currently roiling the Middle East: borders contrived by others, a weak state housing weak institutions, a Palestinian presence, civil war, resistance to societal and political change, Sunni/Shia sectarianism, occupation, militant Islam as a political ideology, conflict over the common identity essential to turning a fragile state into a viable nation, a troubled democratic tradition, and war perpetrated by forces inside and outside its borders. Lessons learned from these conflicts will ease understanding and resolution elsewhere.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Ex-Arabist brought up to date May 30, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
As someone who lived in Beirut in the early sixties and has lost touch with the country, I found Mackey extremely helpful in putting all subsequent events into perspective without taking sides except against the selfish elites who have ruined the country over and over again.
Tarik April 15, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I found this book very good at pointing to the complexities in dealing with the "identity" question that is very active in both East and West. I am a Lebanese-American from south Lebanon and serve in the US Armed Forces. In reading this book I couldn't help but laugh (in a good way) at the similarities between what the author describes in it and the personalities I am force to accept. Her ability to dissect the shades of chemistry in culture, politics, and economics is Eye-POPING!!! Any one interested in culture and conflict management in; or the recent history of, the Middle East must read this book.
 for the basic understanding of Lebanese affairs is a great read April 8, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Sandra shows in this book a comand in Lebanese affairs, so this is a great read for people traying to understand the actual Lebanon.
 Too much focus on israel and not enough on Lebanon April 6, 2008
5 out of 11 found this review helpful
To read this book is to come to beleive that everything that has taken place in Lebanon has something to do with Israel. While this may be the propoganda of Hizbullah it hardly meets with reality. The author begins by claiming the American invasion of Iraq was designed to 'protest Israel without forcing Tel Aviv to address Palestinian rights.' Unfortunatly there is no evidence for this in scholarly form or from media or government broadcasts in 2003. It is a claim out of the mouth of a conspiracy theorist. The obsession with Israel takes away from any context in the book. In desscribing the rise of the Phalange the book seeks to see it entirely from the viewpoint of Israel, whereas the Phalange and its heritage in Peirre Gemayel go back to the 1930s, long before Israel. The author attributes the Israeli invasion in 1982 entirely to an alliance between Bashir Gemayel and Israel which was only slightly true. Begin indeed wanted to save the only non-Muslim neighbor Israel had and he enjoyed the idea of helping beleagured Christians but the author seems to ignore that Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel preceeded the invasion, as did the killing of an Israeli diplomat. The author seems to have forgotten the mini-state Arafat created in Lebanon.
These blatent omissions make the rest of the material in the book suspect. How can one know what to trust. The history of Lebanon is interesting and there are nuggets of interest in this book, but the strange political interpretations and selective memory of the author and the failure to focus on Lebanese culture, for instance the Druze and Greek-Orthodox and Armenians, and instead to make this book about Israel's role in Lebanon weakens it. Lebanon is not really a mirror of the Arab world either. It is entirely unique.
Seth J. Frantzman
 Substandard repetition of Lebanon's history March 16, 2008
15 out of 22 found this review helpful
"Mirror of the Arab World: Lebanon in Conflict" by Sandra Mackey is a journalistic rehash of repetitive accounts of what goes on in Lebanon. The book scandalously borrows from other standard works without substantiation or referecing even when statistics and important details are stated in the book. Entire passages seem to have been taken liberally from other books without footnoting that. It is full of factual and historical errors (pre-war Lebanese election was in 1972 not 1974, Hafez Assad died in 2000 not 2002, Syria's president is Bashar not Bashir, etc.). The attempt to collapse complex issues about religion and community and the narratives of Iraq and other Middle East countries is anything but professional. The choice of the photo on the cover is ill-advised. It is about the destruction of Beirut's downtown in 1975 but this risks giving the reader the feeling that this is happening now.
On the bright side, those trying to learn something about Lebanon and the Middle East for the first time will get an easy-going read. Also I grant the author her good intentions towards the people of the Middle East.
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