politically isolated and labelled a pariah state. Dirk Vandewalle, one of only a handful of Western scholars to visit the country during this time, is intimately acquainted with Libya. He offers a lucid and comprehensive account of Libya's past, and corrects some of the misunderstandings about its present. The story begins in the 1900s with a portrait of Libya's desert terrain and the personalities that shaped its development. Professor Vandewalle then covers Libya's history during the Italian colonial period (1911-1943) and the monarchy that ruled between 1951 and 1969. He goes on to discuss the subsequent regime of Colonel Qadhafi and the economic, political, and ideological developments that he engendered. Finally, he describes the most recent events that brought Libya back into the international fold. As the first comprehensive history of Libya over the last two decades, this book will be welcomed by scholars and students of North Africa, the Middle East, and by those who are visiting and doing business in the region. Diederik (Dirk) Vandewalle is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, and former chair of its Asian and Middle Eastern Studies program. His academic specialty focuses on the political economy of North Africa, and on strategies of political and economic liberalization in the region. Vandewalle is the author of Libya Since Independence: Oil and State-building ( 1998), editor of two volumes on Libya and North Africa, and author of numerous journal articles. He has received, among a number of awards, a Fulbright and Social Science Research Council grant for his research, and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Institute of International Development and at Harvard's Center of Middle Eastern Studies.

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