Scan barcode
kilkilshah's review against another edition
5.0
The book describes the events that led up to the Arab Spring revolutions and the events that transpired afterward. It focuses on five countries (Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen). Very accessible and written from the perspective of a diverse set of people that experienced these events. Highly recommended.
mkesten's review against another edition
5.0
"A Rage for Order" is just another one of those books I found terribly depressing and enlightening at the same time. A power vacuum sucked all the optimism out of the Middle East after the Arab Spring when the euphoria of overturning dictators wore off. But who to indict first: 1) The disorganized liberal and leftist factions; 2) the moderately organized Islamist groups; 3) the better organized (and corrupt) military bureaucracies; or 4) the moneyed interests in Saudi Arabia? I'll have to leave answering these questions to my Middle East friends. In the meantime, who will take responsibility for the mess in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, or what seems the biggest mess of all: Syria? Syria, like Yugoslavia and Rwanda before it, pits neighbour against neighbour. Family friendships give way to suspicion, distrust, and too frequently violence. Perhaps I knew once, but had forgotten, that Bashir al Assad, pressured by the West to step down, took the unwarranted step of emptying all his prisons of the most radical Islamists and murderers to shift public outrage away from him to the growing jihadi groups. As I recall, he took a page from Fidel Castro's playbook. In order to get even with the US acceptance of boat people from Cuba, Castro emptied his prisons and sent them all to Miami. Figure out how to put the genii back in the bottle in Syria and you will have a formula for reconciliation in the rest of the Arab states. Some day all of these states will need an accounting much like that which was done in South Africa, without packing the jails once again. Truth, reconciliation, forgiveness, and the political will to move past sectarian grievances. Like Ireland a little? We have the mechanisms to wind down the violence. When will our brothers in the Middle East find the political will to do so?
mikiher's review against another edition
4.0
A well written account of the hope of the Arab Spring and its mostly tragic aftermath.
pumpkincore's review against another edition
2.0
I really wasn't a fan of this book. I liked the premise of it, and I liked the stories--but they were too thick with his opinions of the stories. He didn't just narrate, he applied a western lens to them. His bias was blatant from the introduction, and the stories were filtered through his feelings and reactions to to the storytellers.
There's some interesting stuff here, if you're willing to sift.
There's some interesting stuff here, if you're willing to sift.
jasonfurman's review against another edition
5.0
An excellent journalistic account of the Arab Spring and its aftermath. It begins with the heady days of Tahrir Square in Egypt and also covers the events in Libya, Syria, Yemen and finally end on a more positive note with Tunisia. The first part of the book is "Revolts" and the second is "Restorations" and it provides a little bit of history, a decent amount of current events, and a lot of journalistic narrative around several people caught up in events--for example, teenage sunni and alawi girls whose friendship dissolves as the civil war develops, foreign fighters who join and then escape ISIS, villagers in Yemen seeking fairness, a more moderate cleric in Egypt, and many more. The book really humanizes events in a tragic and brutal manner, although ultimately ending with the comparatively successful reconciliation in Tunisia.
lukescalone's review against another edition
5.0
Really kaleidoscopic, Robert Worth is able to zoom in and out with ease. Most of these chapters emphasize a few individuals and a couple stories, which are then used to talk more broadly about individual societies. Although I can't properly evaluate a number of cases here, I thought Worth's treatment of Tunisia was particularly interesting. In that chapter, he analyzes the relationship between the late former president, Beji Caid Essebsi, and the leader of the Islamist Ennahda, Rached Ghannouchi, to see how a national dialogue was built and brought Tunisia out of its 2013-14 constitutional crisis. I'm going to use this review to talk a little bit about Worth's treatment of Tunisia.
Worth is truly sympathetic to both of these individuals, although I do get the sense that he prefers Ghannouchi. Ghannouchi is treated as an individual as committed to liberal democracy as he is to developing a more Islamic society. Essebsi, in contrast, as seen as a positive [although weaker] symbol of the old Bourguibist strain in Tunisian politics. To Worth, Rached Ghannouchi laid his entire political career on the line to safeguard Tunisian democracy and avert civil war, whereas Essebsi made a few less significant overtures and the Quartet merely mediated the affair. In large part, I do agree with Worth's treatment of Ghannouchi, but I think one failing he has is that by emphasizing the role of individuals, he misses the larger potential threat of Ennahda. At some point, Ennahda will need to move from collaboration to confrontation if it wants to maintain its role as a potentially generative force in Tunisian politics [for more on this shift, see Sarah Yerkes's and Zeineb Ben Yahmed's article here].
In addition--as much as I respect Bajbouj--I think Worth downplays the issues with his political history and the corruption in Tunisian politics. Take the critical role of Nabil Karoui, for instance, in arranging the series of meetings between Essebsi and Ghannouchi. As anyone who follows Tunisian politics knows, Karoui is corrupt as fuck and I don't doubt that Essebsi had a stake in Karoui's corruption. I don't have the patience to deal with Karoui here, but I will say that I'm glad he lost the presidency to Kais Saied last year.
Worth is truly sympathetic to both of these individuals, although I do get the sense that he prefers Ghannouchi. Ghannouchi is treated as an individual as committed to liberal democracy as he is to developing a more Islamic society. Essebsi, in contrast, as seen as a positive [although weaker] symbol of the old Bourguibist strain in Tunisian politics. To Worth, Rached Ghannouchi laid his entire political career on the line to safeguard Tunisian democracy and avert civil war, whereas Essebsi made a few less significant overtures and the Quartet merely mediated the affair. In large part, I do agree with Worth's treatment of Ghannouchi, but I think one failing he has is that by emphasizing the role of individuals, he misses the larger potential threat of Ennahda. At some point, Ennahda will need to move from collaboration to confrontation if it wants to maintain its role as a potentially generative force in Tunisian politics [for more on this shift, see Sarah Yerkes's and Zeineb Ben Yahmed's article here].
In addition--as much as I respect Bajbouj--I think Worth downplays the issues with his political history and the corruption in Tunisian politics. Take the critical role of Nabil Karoui, for instance, in arranging the series of meetings between Essebsi and Ghannouchi. As anyone who follows Tunisian politics knows, Karoui is corrupt as fuck and I don't doubt that Essebsi had a stake in Karoui's corruption. I don't have the patience to deal with Karoui here, but I will say that I'm glad he lost the presidency to Kais Saied last year.