This is a scholarly treatment of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon-that is, an essay in despair punctuated by moments of creativity, clarity, and light. The author, an anthropologist who teaches at the University of Louisville, has spent three decades studying the cramped spaces in which for nearly sixty years Palestinians have worked out their fates, without much hope of freedom, establishing a national identity and a politics. If you want to understand the conditions that gave rise to the Lebanese Army's month-long siege of a camp outside Tripoli, read Peteet.