"For three decades, Cole has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. In The New Arabs he outlines the history that led to the dramatic changes in the region, and explores how a new generation of men and women are using innovative notions of personal rights to challenge the authoritarianism, corruption, and stagnation that had afflicted their societies."--Provided by publisher.

Less than twenty-four months after the hope-filled Arab uprising, the popular movement had morphed into a dystopia of resurgent dictators, failed states, and civil wars. Egypt's epochal transition to democracy ended in a violent military coup. Yemen and Libya collapsed into civil war, while Bahrain erupted in smothering sectarian repression. Syria proved the greatest victim of all, ripped apart by internationally fueled insurgencies and an externally supported, bloody-minded regime. Amidst the chaos, a virulently militant group declared an Islamic State, seizing vast territories and inspiring terrorism across the globe. What happened? The New Arab Wars is a profound illumination of the causes of this nightmare. It details the costs of the poor choices made by regional actors, delivers a scathing analysis of Western misreadings of the conflict, and condemns international interference that has stoked the violence. Informed by commentators and analysts from the Arab world, Marc Lynch's narrative of a vital region's collapse is both wildly dramatic and likely to prove definitive. Most important, he shows that the region's upheavals have only just begun -- and that the hopes of Arab regimes and Western policy makers to retreat to old habits of authoritarian stability are doomed to fail.

WINNER OF THE ARAB AMERICAN BOOK AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR The stunning debut of a brilliant nonfiction writer whose vivid account of his grandparents' lives in Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, and Los Angeles reclaims his family's Jewish Arab identity There was a time when being an "Arab" didn't mean you were necessarily Muslim. It was a time when Oscar Hayoun, a Jewish Arab, strode along the Nile in a fashionable suit, long before he and his father arrived at the port of Haifa to join the Zionist state only to find themselves hosed down with DDT and then left unemployed on the margins of society. In that time, Arabness was a mark of cosmopolitanism, of intellectualism. Today, in the age of the Likud and ISIS, Oscar's son, the Jewish Arab journalist Massoud Hayoun whom Oscar raised in Los Angeles, finds his voice by telling his family's story. To reclaim a worldly, nuanced Arab identity is, for Hayoun, part of the larger project to recall a time before ethnic identity was mangled for political ends. It is also a journey deep into a lost age of sophisticated innocence in the Arab world; an age that is now nearly lost. When We Were Arabs showcases the gorgeous prose of the Eppy Award–winning writer Massoud Hayoun, bringing the worlds of his grandparents alive, vividly shattering our contemporary understanding of what makes an Arab, what makes a Jew, and how we draw the lines over which we do battle.

Setting the record straight about Arab American culture.

"The renowned blogger and Middle East expert Juan Cole illuminates the role of today's Arab youth--who they are, what they want, and how they will affect world politics. Beginning in January 2011, the revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests, riots, and civil wars that comprised what many call "the Arab Spring" shook the world. These upheavals were spearheaded by youth movements, and yet the crucial role they played is relatively unknown. Middle East expert Juan Cole is here to share their stories. For three decades, Cole has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. In The New Arabs he outlines the history that led to the dramatic changes in the region, and explores how a new generation of men and women are using innovative notions of personal rights to challenge the authoritarianism, corruption, and stagnation that had afflicted their societies. Not all big cohorts of teenagers and twenty-somethings necessarily produce movements centered on their identity as youth, with a generational set of organizations, symbols, and demands rooted at least partially in the distinctive problems besetting people of their age. The Arab Millennials did. And, in a provocative and optimistic argument about the future of the Arab world, The New Arabs shows just how they did it"--Provided by publisher.

From Fouad Ajami, an acclaimed author and chronicler of Arab politics, comes a compelling account of how a generation of Arab intellectuals tried to introduce cultural renewals in their homelands through the forces of modernity and secularism. Ultimately, they came to face disappointment, exile, and, on occasion, death. Brilliantly weaving together the strands of a tumultuous century in Arab political thought, history, and poetry, Ajami takes us from the ruins of Beirut's once glittering metropolis to the land of Egypt, where struggle rages between a modernist impulse and an Islamist insurgency, from Nasser's pan-Arab nationalist ambitions to the emergence of an uneasy Pax Americana in Arab lands, from the triumphalism of the Gulf War to the continuing anguished debate over the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords. For anyone who seeks to understand the Middle East, here is an insider's unflinching analysis of the collision between intellectual life and political realities in the Arab world today.

The Arab Spring promised to end dictatorship and bring self-government to people across the Middle East. Yet everywhere except Tunisia it led to either renewed dictatorship, civil war, extremist terror, or all three. In The Arab Winter, Noah Feldman argues that the Arab Spring was nevertheless not an unmitigated failure, much less an inevitable one. Rather, it was a noble, tragic series of events in which, for the first time in recent Middle Eastern history, Arabic-speaking peoples took free, collective political action as they sought to achieve self-determination.

A riveting, comprehensive history of the Arab peoples and tribes that explores the role of language as a cultural touchstone This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia. Mackintosh-Smith reveals how linguistic developments--from pre-Islamic poetry to the growth of script, Muhammad's use of writing, and the later problems of printing Arabic--have helped and hindered the progress of Arab history, and investigates how, even in today's politically fractured post-Arab Spring environment, Arabic itself is still a source of unity and disunity.

From Bay Ridge to Astoria, explore political action in Arab New York Arab Americans are a numerically small proportion of the US population yet have been the target of a disproportionate amount of political scrutiny. Most non-Arab Americans know little about what life is actually like within Arab communities and in organizations run by and for the Arab community. Big political questions are central to the Arab American experience—how are politics integrated into Arab Americans’ everyday lives? In Arab New York, Emily Regan Wills looks outside the traditional ideas of political engagement to see the importance of politics in Arab American communities in New York. Regan Wills focuses on the spaces of public and communal life in the five boroughs of New York, which are home to the third largest concentration of people of Arab descent in the US. Many different ethnic and religious groups form the overarching Arab American identity, and their political engagement in the US is complex. Regan Wills examines the way that daily practice and speech form the foundation of political action and meaning. Drawing on interviews and participant observation with activist groups and community organizations, Regan Wills explores topics such as Arab American identity for children, relationships with Arab and non-Arab Americans, young women as leaders in the Muslim and Arab American community, support and activism for Palestine, and revolutionary change in Egypt and Yemen. Ultimately, she claims that in order to understand Arab American political engagement and see how political action develops in Arab American contexts, one must understand Arab Americans in their own terms of political and public engagement. They are, Regan Wills argues, profoundly engaged with everyday politics and political questions that don’t match up to conventional politics. Arab New York draws from rich ethnographic data and presents a narrative, compelling picture of a community engaging with politics on its own terms. Written to expand the existing literature on Arab Americans to include more direct engagement with politics and discourse, Arab New York also serves as an appropriate introduction to Arab American communities, ethnic dynamics in New York City and elsewhere in urban America, and the concept of everyday politics.

Metropolitan Detroit is home to one of the largest and most diverse Arab communities outside the Middle East. Arabic-speaking immigrants have been coming to Detroit for more than a century, yet the community they have built is barely visible on the landscape of ethnic America. Arab Detroit brings together the work of twenty-five contributors to create a richly detailed portrait of Arab Detroit. Memoirs and poems by Lebanese, Chaldean, Yemeni, and Palestinian writers anchor the book in personal experience, and more than fifty photographs drawn from family albums and the files of local photojournalists provide a backdrop of vivid, often unexpected images. Students and scholars of ethnicity, immigration, and Arab American communities will welcome this diverse collect on.