Book Summary and Reviews of The New Arabs by Juan Cole

The New Arabs by Juan Cole

The New Arabs

How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East

by Juan Cole

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  • Published:
  • Jul 2014, 368 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Young people and their smartphones overthrow dictatorships in this rousing study of the Arab Spring... Cole's deep, nuanced exploration of political and social currents underneath the uprisings shines." - Publishers Weekly

"An elegant, carefully delineated synthesis of the complicated, intertwined facets of theArab uprisings." - Kirkus

This information about The New Arabs was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Juan Cole

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is author of Engaging the Muslim World and Napoleon's Egypt. He has been a regular guest on PBS's News Hour and has also appeared on ABC Nightly News, Nightline, the TODAY show, Charlie Rose, Anderson Cooper 360, Rachel Maddow, the Colbert Report, Democracy Now! Aljazeera America and many others. He has commented extensively on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Iraq, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Syria, and Iranian domestic struggles and foreign affairs. He has a regular column on the TruthDig.com. Visit JuanCole.com.

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