The author, David Hirst, was the Middle East correspondent for The Guardian newspaper. The main focus of this book is the role that Lebanon has played in the larger Israel-Palestinian conflict, so the title is actually quite clever, as it refers to multiple small states and not just to Lebanon itself. Much of this material was familiar to me, but I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good, generally balanced history of the western Middle East that looks that the Israel-Palestine conflict through a lens that is perhaps less familiar to general readers. ( )