This authoritative reference work describes in detail the more than 400 Palestinian villages destroyed or depopulated during the 1948 war. The body of the text is devoted to the villages themselves: each village entry comprises statistical data and several narrative sections. Field research by former residents and guides is used to pinpoint the precise location of village sites. A wide variety of Arab and Western sources is used to summarize village history before 1948 and to synthesize information about its topography, architecture, institutions and economic activity. Israeli and Arab accounts focus on the military operations that led to the conquest of the village. Entries also contain a description of the current status of the site, including post-1948 Israeli settlements established on confiscated village lands. Several hundred photographs, a number of informative maps and five appendices enhance the text prepared by more than thirty participants over a period of nearly six years.