July 1: Juan’s new Book, “The New Arabs” hits the Shelves

By Juan Cole

For those of you who like “long reads,” my new book will be out next Tuesday. For those of you intending to buy it, let me suggest that you all purchase it on its publication date, July 1. The way the publishing metrics work, if you can get the book to a certain position at, say, Amazon.com, it tends to stay there for a while. That can be achieved if fans all act on the same day or over a short period of time. I am so grateful to my readers for their daily support of this blog, and hope you enjoy the story of my travels among the Arab youth who have taken on the region’s seedy dictators. They’ve had mixed success, but their courageous struggles are a great saga.

The book is “The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East (Simon & Schuster)

Publisher’s Weekly says:

Young people and their smartphones overthrow dictatorships in this rousing study of the Arab Spring. University of Michigan historian Cole (Engaging the Muslim World) follows the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya from their roots in dissident organizing though the mass protests of 2011, the collapse of repressive regimes, and ensuing political turmoil. He focuses on the leadership of the “millennial” generation of young, urban, secular activists, their horizons broadened by the Internet and satellite TV, their “interactive networks and horizontal organizations” empowered by blogs and YouTube videos that spread ideas and rallied demonstrators. Cole’s exhilarating journalistic narrative of their exploits is enlivened by interviews with participants and his own colorful firsthand accounts of upheavals. His emphasis on youth and technology is sometimes overdone; revolution was for young firebrands as much in 1848 as in 2011, and old-fashioned factors—allegiances of soldiers, the humble paper pamphlet—play as important a role as youthful élan and social media. However, Cole’s deep, nuanced exploration of political and social currents underneath the uprisings shines; he shows Westerners who think the Arab world is divided between corrupt despots and Islamist zealots just how strong and pervasive the tendencies towards liberalism and democracy are. Agent: Brettne Bloom, Kneerim, Williams & Bloom. (July)