Among Middle Eastern and North African states, Libya has been under-studied, especially in recent years, because of difficulties in doing fieldwork and because of Libya's isolation by the American-led international boycott in the wake of the Lockerbie incident. Vandewalle's book is not only a much needed and fresh look at the inner workings of Libya; it is also a very valuable contribution to an ongoing theoretical debate over rentier states, state-building, and étatism. It is the culmination of fourteen months of fieldwork that included interviews with many high officials and access to primary source material available only in Libya.