This is a delightful book. “Delightful” is not a word I usually apply to encyclopaedias, but I am happy to do so for this one; and this even despite the rather intimidating subject of the Palestinians. In contrast to the stone‐throwing, gun‐toting, hysterical images we get on our television screens and newspapers, what we have here is a book which is attractive, easy to handle, urbanely informational and bursting with leads and references to other sources.
Abbas, Mahmud, is the first entry. The entry by‐line tells us he is also known as Abu Mazin, that he is an activist and politician born in 1935. The page about him reveals an education that took him to a PhD in Moscow, followed by various posts in a number of Palestinian organisations, to his recent activities in the higher echelons of the Arab‐Israeli peace processes. References within the article lead to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), Yasir Arafat, Palestininan Authority (PA) and the Palestinian Legislative Council. Abbas, Muhammad (guerilla leader), Abd al‐Baqi, Ahmad Hilmi (banker, politician), Abd al‐Hadi, Awni (lawyer, politician) and the Abd al‐Hadi Family (Amin, Fakhri and Ruhi) follow. Reading these biographies (biographies make up about a third of the entries) introduces us to the human dimension behind the headlines and a more sober gloss on this fraught subject. Kuwait is not Palestine, but it was a successful Palestinian power base before the Iraqi invasion. This latter resulted in “one of the biggest Palestinian setbacks of modern times”. This is well covered in the articles on Kuwait and the Gulf Crisis, with mentions in the articles on Education and Human Rights.
The aim of this encyclopedia is to respond to the need for a comprehensive one‐volume compendium of knowledge about modern Palestinian history and society that is at once wide in scope, intermediate in size, authoritative and readable.
Forty‐eight scholars, mostly American, Palestinian and Israeli, participated, and a thorough programme of referral to experts and rewriting has paid off handsomely; the prose is some of the most lucid and readable I have seen. One can almost forget that this is an encylopaedia and just carry on reading through the alphabet! Special mention should also be made of the maps. There are plenty of these, and despite the lack of colour, the large page‐size format and clear detail are excellent. Coverage is weighted in favour of the twentieth century though it does go back to the late Ottoman era of Egyptian occupation, 1831‐40. Although political topics predominate, the editor was keen to cover other, less publicized areas, and we find articles on Palestinian literature, archaeology and folklore.
The 400 or so articles vary from a paragraph to several pages, but in general they are longer than in most other encyclopaedias, which may account, in part, for their readability. There is a useful preface that sets the scene for a fuller appreciation of work, and there are generous bibliographies to the articles with a separate annotated bibliography at the end. There is a glossary, a chronology (638 to 9 Sept, 1999 ‐ Israel and PLO sign Sharm al‐Shaykh Memorandum) and an index.
This is another excellent reference work from Fitzroy Dearborn (with a small debt to Facts on File if I read the hints correctly). It is recommended for general and specialist reference collections.
