'Beware of Small States' wrote Mikhail Bukanin in 1870. He could have meant Lebanon: a sectarian state no bigger than Wales that has become battleground for one of the defining conflicts of twentieth-century history. Throughout its short existence, it has been attacked, invaded, occupied or interfered with to serve the political interests of foreign powers, resulting a series of devastating wars and crises. To understand Lebanon's history is to understand the history of the entire region - and, with the rise of Hizbullah, it has come to assume a disproportionate, dangerous power of its own. Iran and Israel now face each other in the hills of south Lebanon. David Hirst, author of The Gun and the Olive Branch, is a hugely respected commentator on the Arab-Israeli crisis. In a masterly narrative, he gives a much-needed, comprehensive history of the country and its conflicts, culminating with the recent war in Gaza and its fallout in Lebanon. Powerful and often moving, Beware of Small States is a magisterial book, essential reading for understanding Lebanon or the current political climate of the Middle East.

A myth-breaking general history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, The Gun And The Olive Branch traces events right back to the 1880s to show how Arab violence, although often cruel and fanatical, is a response to the challenge of repeated aggression.

Banned from six Arab countries, kidnapped twice, David Hirst, former Middle East correspondent of the Guardian, is the ideal chronicler of this terrible and seemingly insoluble conflict. The new edition of this ‘definitive’ (Irish Times) study brings the story right up to date.

Amongst the many topics that are subjected to Hirst’s piercing analysis are: the Oslo peace process, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the destabilising effect of Jewish settlement in the territories, the second Intifada and the terrifying rise of the suicide bombers, the growing power of the Israel lobby – Jewish and Christian fundamentalist – in the United States, the growth of dissent in Israel and among sections of America’s Jewish population, the showdown between Sharon and Arafat and the spectre of nuclear catastrophe that threatens to destroy the region.

For at least the last half-century, Strehler has been an influential and integral part of European theatrical life; today he is most closely associated with the Teatro Piccolo in Milan, Italy's foremost repertory theatre. Outside Italy, Strehler is best known through his directorship of the Paris-based Theatre de l'Europe, his opera productions, and the plays in the Piccolo repertoire which have toured widely. In this detailed study, David Hirst evaluates the particular qualities which typify Strehler's work: the lyrical realism which has become the hallmark of his mature style, the fusion of naturalism, epic theatre, commedia dell'arte and lyric opera, and the gift of interpretation and production. Hirst traces this unique style through Strehler's development from the foundation of the Piccolo to the present day and analyses his productions of Goldoni, Shakespeare, Brecht and Verdi among others.

For at least the last half-century, Strehler has been an influential and integral part of European theatrical life; today he is most closely associated with the Teatro Piccolo in Milan, Italy's foremost repertory theatre. Outside Italy, Strehler is best known through his directorship of the Paris-based Theatre de l'Europe, his opera productions, and the plays in the Piccolo repertoire which have toured widely. In this detailed study, David Hirst evaluates the particular qualities which typify Strehler's work: the lyrical realism which has become the hallmark of his mature style, the fusion of naturalism, epic theatre, commedia dell'arte and lyric opera, and the gift of interpretation and production. Hirst traces this unique style through Strehler's development from the foundation of the Piccolo to the present day and analyses his productions of Goldoni, Shakespeare, Brecht and Verdi among others.

In this magisterial history of Lebanon, from the end of Ottoman rule to the Hezbollah and Hamas wars of today, acclaimed and fiercely independent Middle East journalist and historian David Hirst charts the interplay between a uniquely complex country and the broader struggles of the modern Middle East. Lebanon is the battleground on which the region's greater states pursue their strategic, political, and ideological conflicts--conflicts that sometimes escalate into full-scale proxy wars. Hirst warns that only serious diplomatic action from the Obama administration can prevent the next such action from engulfing the entire region.

The analysis of acousmatic music has traditionally been very difficult since there is no score to freeze the music in time. Analysis relies heavily on the act of concentrated listening. Since aural perception is so crucial to the analysis of acousmatic music, this book poses the questions: Can a framework for the analysis of acousmatic music be derived from cognition theories, research on the auditory perception of everyday environmental sounds, and studies into the perception of Western tonal music? If so, what are the frameworks attributes? From experimental data documented in the relevant literature, this book draws together the constituents of a cognitive framework called the Segregation, Integration, Assimilation and Meaning (SIAM) framework for the analysis of acousmatic music. The book reports on the practical application of the SIAM framework through a detailed analysis of the work Wind Chimes, by Denis Smalley. This analytical methodology should be especially useful to auditory cognition professionals, researchers interested in musical analysis of non-notated music, and composers seeking to gain more insight into musical structures in electroacoustic music in general.

More than a decade before Israel's New Historians revolutionized the study of Israeli history, English journalist David Hirst wrote The Gun and the Olive Branch, a classic, myth-breaking general history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hirst, former Middle East correspondent of the Guardian, traces the origins of the terrible conflict back to the 1880s to show how Arab violence, although often cruel and fanatical, is a response to the challenge of repeated aggression. The Gun and the Olive Branch is an absorbing, potentially controversial, history of the Middle Eastern conflict that is indispensable to anyone with an interest in world politics and by partisans of both sides. This classic and controversial account of the origins of the Middle East conflict returns to print updated with a lengthy introduction that reflects on the course of recent Middle Eastern history-especially the abortive Israeli-Palestinian peace process and 9/11.