As Egypt retreats from its newly elected government and Syria moves from one crisis to another, this book's reflection on the Arab Spring could not be more timely. Monshipouri's account of the role of emotion, solidarity, and online activism is informed by several trips to the region that continue to this day. Modern technologies and social media, organization on the ground, and challenges to shaping a country's political future after conflict are all essential subjects discussed in this important book, told in an engaging and accessible narrative.

In False Dawn, noted Middle East regional expert Steven Cook offers a sweeping narrative account of the past five years, moving from Turkey to Tunisia to Yemen to Iraq to Egypt and beyond, ultimately presenting a powerful theoretical analysis of why the Arab Spring failed.

As Egypt retreats from its newly elected government and Syria moves from one crisis to another, this book’s reflection on the Arab Spring could not be more timely. Monshipouri’s account of the role of emotion, solidarity, and online activism is informed by several trips to the region that continue to this day. The uprisings were fueled by a demographic surge of young people unable to find employment and frustrated by the lack of freedom, and now the elected regime has been ousted for failing to address these continuing circumstances. While modern technologies and social media may have brought new politics to the streets, organization on the ground trumps the enthusiasm of young protesters when it comes to shaping a country’s political future. How to turn elections into democracy in these post-conflict societies continues to be a daunting task, especially in countries with a longstanding history of military involvement in politics now experiencing a resurgence. This book addresses all of these subjects in an engaging and accessible narrative. Key features of the text:

Marc Lynch's last book, The Arab Uprising, described the then ongoing revolutionary change and prospect for the consolidation of democracy in key Arab countries that still seemed possible. But Lynch saw dark signs on the horizon, especially in Syria. That book ended with the hope that the Arab uprisings heralded a fundamental change over the long-term, but with the warning that Arab regimes would not easily give up their power. Instead, Egypt’s revolution has given way to a military coup; Libya’s produced a failed state; Yemen is the battleground for a proxy war and will be destroyed; Syria has become a sprawling humanitarian catastrophe that will take a generation to begin to recover from. At the same time, America has less and less reason to want to engage with the region and now has only one functional ally apart from Israel. The New Arab Wars describes how the political landscape of an entire region has been convulsed, with much of it given over to anarchy, as proxy wars on behalf of three competing powers—Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia—scar the region. It is a brutal, compelling story.

The 2011 eruptions of popular discontent across the Arab world, popularly dubbed the Arab Spring, were local manifestations of a regional mass movement for democracy, freedom, and human dignity. Authoritarian regimes were either overthrown or put on notice that the old ways of oppressing their subjects would no longer be tolerated. These essays from Middle East Report—the leading source of timely reporting and insightful analysis of the region—cover events in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen. Written for a broad audience of students, policymakers, media analysts, and general readers, the collection reveals the underlying causes of the revolts by identifying key trends during the last two decades leading up to the recent insurrections.

The Arab Spring unleashed forces of liberation and social justice that swept across North Africa and the Middle East with unprecedented speed, ferocity, and excitement. Although the future of the democratic uprisings against oppressive authoritarian regimes remains uncertain in many places, the revolutionary wave that started in Tunisia in December 2010 has transformed how the world sees Arab peoples and politics. Bringing together the knowledge of activists, scholars, journalists, and policy experts uniquely attuned to the pulse of the region, Dispatches from the Arab Spring offers an urgent and engaged analysis of a remarkable ongoing world-historical event that is widely misinterpreted in the West. Tracing the flows of protest, resistance, and counterrevolution in every one of the countries affected by this epochal change—from Morocco to Iraq and Syria to Sudan—the contributors provide ground-level reports and new ways of teaching about and understanding the Middle East in general, and contextualizing the social upheavals and political transitions that defined the Arab Spring in particular. Rejecting outdated and invalid (yet highly influential) paradigms to analyze the region—from depictions of the “Arab street” as a mindless, reactive mob to the belief that Arab culture was “unfit” for democratic politics—this book offers fresh insights into the region’s dynamics, drawing from social history, political geography, cultural creativity, and global power politics. Dispatches from the Arab Spring is an unparalleled introduction to the changing Middle East and offers the most comprehensive and accurate account to date of the uprisings that profoundly reshaped North Africa and the Middle East. Contributors: Sheila Carapico, U of Richmond; Nouri Gana, UCLA; Toufic Haddad; Adam Hanieh, SOAS/U of London; Toby C. Jones, Rutgers U; Anjali Kamat; Khalid Medani, McGill U; Merouan Mekouar; Maya Mikdashi, NYU; Paulo Gabriel Hilu Pinto, U Federal Fluminense, Brazil; Jillian Schwedler, Hunter College, CUNY; Ahmad Shokr; Susan Slyomovics, UCLA; Haifa Zangana.

The New Middle East critically examines the Arab popular uprisings of 2011-12.