War and the City

This fascinating book gives the reader a visceral sense of how war pulsates through the fabric of a city, coursing in its veins, pounding against its hotel buildings, ripping apart and sewing together its neighbourhoods. The Beirut of this book is a Beirut made and unmade and remade yet again by conflict, stubbornly bearing the scars of local enmities and geopolitical conflicts on its body. * Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary University of London * No longer are wars fought only between states; conflicts are more messy, involving paramilitaries, guerrilla groups, mafias, regional and transnational powers, and civilians. Very often the terrain where they strategise and fight is the streets, squares, buildings and infrastructures of the city. Sara Fregonese's War and the City offers a particularly insightful window into these realities in the Two Years War in 1975 and 76 Beirut. She cautions that we would be wise to understand a more complex hybrid conflict where state and non-state actors vie for sovereignty and the geopolitical and urban are intertwined. Fregonese's account is specific and nuanced but with wide-ranging implications. It is well-placed to become a key text in how we understand the new urban warfare and with that, the formation of new sovereignties. * Wendy Pullan, Director of the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research, University of Cambridge * Beautifully written, well researched, this book is a fascinating exploration of the deeper entanglements between war and the urban fabric. * Professor Claudio Minca, Head of Department of Geography and Planning, Macquarie University *