I had originally thought this book was a documentery on David Gilmour's life, I was wrong. It is, however, an excellent item for the collector of his things. This is actually, "an annotated guide to the guitar technique of David Gilmour". It contains music for a lot of his really killer songs. So for anyone that can read music and loves Floyd I would highly recommend it. I myself will keep it as an interesting book in my collection!

The small things in this world often go unnoticed. Importance itself becomes reduced to a mere state of relativity in a system where the balance of power is solidly directional (westward) if not solely regional (West). And so David Gilmour writes of the longest war, in the smallest place in the world. In his book, Lebanon, the Fractured Country, Gilmour tries to explain why political instability was an unavoidable and necessary occurrence within the Lebanese society, and why the Lebanese were eventually driven to simply fight in order to resolve their problems (Gilmour, x).
In the beginning of the text, Gilmour apologizes for the extensive history he provides, but insists that it is the only way to properly relay his point to the reader. He begins with an almost sociological discussion of the Lebanese situation. His views are both personal and distant, as the reader recalls that his first visit to Lebanon was not until 1971, a mere four years before the official onset of the Civil War. When Gilmour finally introduces us to the actual war, it seems like just another piece of history?he involves us with nothing significant or even vaguely telling of the Lebanese society as a whole. And where, I ask, is the Lebanese dimension in this? In the beginning of the text, Gilmour pushes upon his readers the seemingly viral quality of political instability that contaminated Lebanese society; nonetheless, he shrouds this belief in a maelstrom of history. Battered in the onslaught, a third of the way into the book I found myself looking up, mystified as to what he was talking about; I had forgotten the objective of the text. Upon reviewing my notes, I re-realized the second part of his objective, which was to prove the "endemic?quality that defined Lebanese political instability. I came to gather that through the congested use of history, this exact thing was being proven.
Due to Gilmour's lengthy description of Lebanon's plagued political system, I began to wonder if the Lebanese conflict was simply a war between interest groups, gone awry. The war, as Gilmour claims, was not sectarian to begin with; it became that way. Gilmour says that, eventually men were forced to take sides; he apologizes for the conflict they engaged, blaming them in the beginning and then forgiving them in the end. When the extremism affected the mainstream is when the hate began, and the continuation of war was finally justified. Incidents began to polarize the nation, delineating the society past class, filing the people into neat rows of Arabs and Maronites; this is when contemporary divisions based on economic interests, and the balance of modernization vs. preservation, became magnified. When the histories that are described in every chapter of Gilmour's book finally culminate with the statement that "the vast majority of the [Lebanese] people had no desire to continue the war (Gilmour, 119.),?we realize that the Lebanese dimension to the civil war is not, in fact, the initiation of the war, but rather the perpetuation of it. Extremists and interest groups, whom I ally with political partisanship, selfishly dealt the Lebanese a hand with far too many low cards, and not enough spades. These staunchly agendaed groups led the Lebanese from a battle of political in-fighting into what evolved as civil war; in the beginning it was hardly "civil?at all.
I found most of the text to be essential until the section entitled, "The War and Beyond.?The presence of words after the chapter, "Civil War,?I found to be unacceptable. Gilmour lost sight of his purpose when he chose to continue writing. The author had written an engaging text up until this point, where he decided to keep writing about the political tragedies that affected Lebanon. Clearly presented in the beginning of the book, is Gilmour's objective, which presumes to highlight the presence of a Lebanese dimension to the civil war, as well as the political strife that made it inescapable regardless of international presence. Gilmour does this, and his does this well. His only failure? Hyperextension.

Frankly, i was excited to see that there was a book out in publication in David's style. I saw it in a guitar store and was disappointed with the list of songs that you can learn to play. I was hoping that there would be dogs, echoes, pigs on the wing II, wish you were here, shine on, high hopes, Time, Is there anybody out there etc. But the only good song in this book for playing with the guitar is On the Turning away. The other songs are effects pedals ridden. Its hard to play them if you don't have a big pedal board (Well, maybe not Dogs of War). Seriously disappointed. And it is $20!