Twenty-five years after first setting foot on Lebanese soil, award-winning journalist Robert Fisk has revised his brilliant study of this troubled country, Pity the Nation, for a third edition, to include the years since its initial publication in 1990. Artificially created as a country by the French in 1920, Lebanon's revenge was to "welcome all her invaders and then kiss them to death". Since arriving during the 1976 Muslim-Maronite civil war, Fisk has travelled its length to seek out, as well as provide, eye-witness account of combat and atrocity. The book's main pre-occupation is the Israeli invasion of the early 1980s and its terrible aftermath, including the appalling massacre of Palestinians at the Shabra and Chatila camps. Banned in Lebanon itself, the first edition of Pity the Nation ended with close friend and colleague Terry Anderson still being held by Islamic Jihad.