Long the most familiar of the Middle East countries to Americans, Lebanon has become something of an alien. Those who have only recently come to know the name associate Lebanon with extremism, bigotry, and violence. Their portrait is that of a poor, war-torn land not unlike other Third World states except in the savagery of its divisiveness. Those Americans who knew Lebanon in years past, and there were many, have tended to err just as grievously by assuming that the Lebanon whose shattered landscape they see on the front pages of their newspapers or in the more vivid images of television is the same Lebanon they once knew. Geography is more static than society. Apart from literature on the violence in Lebanon - which is largely one-sided material - there is no body of knowledge dealing with contemporary Lebanon. The conflicts in that country both resulted from and created numerous and far-reaching changes in Lebanese society. Let there be no mistake - whatever Lebanon will be in the future, we have passed a watershed. Lebanon is not the same country it was five, ten, or fifteen years ago; the political circumstances have fundamentally and irrevocably changed. This book is an attempt to begin to look at the nature of the changes that have taken place in Lebanon. -- Preface.

Part one: Background --Lebanon after the War of 1982 / Paul A. Jureidini and R. D. McLaurin -- Part II: Focus on Lebanon -- Lebanon and its political culture: Conflict and integration in Lebanon / Edward E. Azar -- Lebanon and its political change events: The pathology os spasm politics and the challenge of reconciliation / Robert J. Pranger -- Lebanon's economy: The costs of protracted violence / Joyce R. Starr -- Lebanon and its army: Past, present, and future / R. D. McLaurin -- Part III: Social change and defense in two Lebanese communities -- The Lebanese forces: Wartime origins and political significance / Lewis W. Snider -- Harakat Amal / Augustus Richard Norton -- Lebanon's regional policy / Paul A. Jureidini -- United States-Lebanese relations: A pocketful of paradoxes / Edward E. Azar and Kate Shnayerson -- Index -- About the authors.