This evening, Stephen Colbert will talk with Timothy Garton Ash, author of Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Nameon Comedy Central’s Colbert Report. Garton Ash, professor of European studies at Oxford, has written extensively on modern political history, notably covering Communism and the 1989 Revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe, and his syndicated writing continues to appear in The Guardianand the New York Review of Books. His book, just out in paperback, explores the “oughts”, “the thousands”—whatever colloquial phrase we’ve decided upon—applying his political acumen to the international issues and affairs of the last decade. From 9/11 to the Orange Revolution and various global statuses of Islam to the election of Barack Obama, there was a lot that just passed by us without a common name, even in an age of rising digital interconnectivity. Check it out tonight on Comedy Central.
At the start of this year, a number of uprisings in the Middle East moved the region center stage in the arena of international politics. In a short amount of time, the Arab world from Morocco to Oman was consumed by protests—and in the politically extreme cases, two revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt have resulted in overthrowing the heads of state of those nations. Some have even speculated that the Arab Spring has begun to turn into the European Summer, with protests in Spain occurring at the end of May. Quite noteworthy to many commentators has been the impact of social media in these uprisings: interactive news feeds, video, and live updates were, and still are, crucial to spreading the word.
YUP has a notable list of political area studies and histories of countries. For example, earlier this year, we released Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak, by journalist Tarek Osman, who was in Cairo throughout the uprisings and managing to interview with news outlets despite the turmoil. Together with Victoria Clark’s Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakesand Martin Evans’ and John Phillips’ Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed, we compiled a free chapter sampler, “Crisis in the Arab World”, available for download in Kindle, ePub, and PDF formats. Given the weekend events in Yemen, with President Saleh fleeing to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, now is a good time to think about these roads to revolution and what the implications are for the Arab world and the global network of participants and onlookers.
Elie Wiesel, the prolific writer and humanitarian, needs little introduction. For the last half-century, his activism and advocacy for human rights have given him unparallel notoriety—some even credit him with our present understanding of the term “Holocaust”—not to mention his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize and the ubiquity of Night and its fictional sequels: Dawn and Day.
Although Wiesel is Romanian by birth, America has become his home. After receiving his Nobel Prize, he and his wife, Marion, started the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, and its Ethics Prize, awarded to American college students writing on particularly difficult ethical challenges and dilemmas in our society, and advocating the actions necessary for our society to undertake. For the past twenty years, “Of all the projects our Foundation has been involved in, none has been more exciting than this opportunity to inspire young students to examine the ethical aspect of what they have learned in their personal lives and from their teachers in the classroom,” writes Wiesel.
The winners of the 2011 Ethics Prize were just announced, and YUP has recently published the highlights from the first twenty years of the prize, including Rachel Maddow’s “Identifiable Lives: AIDS and the Response to Dehumanization,” in An Ethical Compass: Coming of Age in the 21st Century, with a Preface by Wiesel and a Foreword by Thomas L. Friedman. The topics of the essays range from Bosnia, the genocide in Rwanda, sweatshops and globalization, and the political obligations of the mothers of Argentina’s Disappeared to a white student who joins a black gospel choir, a young woman who learns to share in Ladakh, and the outsize implications of reporting on something as small as a cracked windshield.
While you’re at it, don’t forget to check out our other “World of Letters” suggested gifts for graduates, as the millions of people graduating this spring reflect on their own formative experiences and look toward tomorrow’s hopes for the future. (There are gifts for History, Science, Law, and Biography fans, too!)
At the time of the 9/11 attacks, few people in America had heard of the Taliban. And in 2000, when Ahmed Rashid wrote the bestselling Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia,based on his experiences as a journalist covering the civil war in Afghanistan for twenty years, traveling and living with the Taliban, and interviewing most of the Taliban leaders since their emergence to power in 1994, the book offered, and still does, the only authoritative account of the Taliban available to English-language readers. Last year, we published a second edition with a new introduction and an all-new final chapter.
Now that the story continues with the recent death of al-Qaeida leader, Osama bin Laden, Rashid has been interviewing and writing op-eds about bin Laden’s role within the organization and what his death means for the future. Yesterday, he appeared alongside John McLaughlin, Yochi Dreazen, and Paul Pillar on WAMU’s Diane Rehm Show, with guest host Susan Page. He also had an op-ed that ran in the Financial Times, and his book was even referenced in the New York Times obituary for bin Laden. Today, you can listen to Rashid as he interviews on WHYY’s Fresh Airwith Terry Gross.
In the midst of recent events in the Middle East, YUP is offering a special look at the books that cover religion, politics, and culture of the region, and our authors who are active in contributing to these discussions.
Last month, Marwan Muasher gave a talk at Yale as part of the Jackson Senior Fellows Lecture Series, titled “The Arab World in Crisis: Redefining Arab Moderation.” As a top-ranked diplomat, Muasher has held many high-level positions within the government of Jordan, including Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Ambassador to the United States, and first Jordanian Ambassador to Israel. He is the author of The Arab Center: The Promise of Moderation, written prior his appointment as a fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. His recent talk readdresses the issues he presents in his book—the promise and perils of taking the “middle road” toward peace in the Middle East and what must be done to encourage the development of moderate, pragmatic Arab voices—and on YouTube, there is a full lecture from a similar talk he gave that was sponsored by the International Development Research Centre.
For Women’s History Month, we have a forthcoming study of the political and cultural history of the veil over the past half century: A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America, written by Leila Ahmed, the first professor of Women's Studies in Religion at Harvard University and currently the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity at Harvard’s Divinity School. Ahmed was raised by a generation of women who never dressed in the veils and headscarves their mothers and grandmothers had worn. To them, these coverings seemed irrelevant to both modern life and Islamic piety. Today, however, the majority of Muslim women throughout the Islamic world again wear the veil. Why, she asks, did this change take root so swiftly, and what does this shift mean for women, Islam, and the West? When she began her study, Ahmed assumed that the veil's return indicated a backward step for Muslim women worldwide. What she discovered, however, in the stories of British colonial officials, young Muslim feminists, Arab nationalists, pious Islamic daughters, American Muslim immigrants, violent jihadists, and peaceful Islamic activists, confounded her expectations, reaching surprising conclusions about contemporary Islam's place in the West today.
And in looking back on Egypt, where so much action at the start of this year has sparked movement across social media and traditional news outlets—oh, and something of a revolution, too?—we have Egyptian journalist, Tarek Osman, with his newly published book: Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak. His prescient analysis foretold the roles that young Egyptians assumed in determining the future of their nation. The chapter “Young Egyptians” is part of YUP’s “Crisis in the Arab World” free book sampler, also featuring chapters from Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed, by Martin Evans and John Phillips, and Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes, by Victoria Clark, both areas where similar uprisings have begun to stir. The sampler is now available for free download with your choice of PDF, Kindle, and ePub files.
For good measure, watchTarek Osman talk Egyptian politics on Al Jazeera English, the Arabic news network that has provided so many important real time updates throughout these tumultuous times.
Acclaimed journalist Janet Malcolm's new book, Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial, is about to publish later this month. Malcolm's brilliant,compulsively readable coverage of the sensational murder trial of Mazoltuv Borukhova, a beautiful doctor from the Bucharin-Jewish community in Forest Hills, who allegedly hired a hit man to kill her husband, dominated an issue of The New Yorker. Yet her new book contains significant never before published material -- interviews with the victim's father and brothers, with defense and prosecution attorneys, even a visit to Rikers Island. And the trial is very much back in the news with an appeal argued by Alan Dershowitz.
YUP is sponsoring a giveaway of 10 copies on Goodreads.com. Log in with your account and enter today. The contest runs until March 29, 2011 when the book is officially published.
The events of January and February 2011 have shaken not only the Middle East and North Africa but the whole world.
Starting in Tunisia in December 2010, unrest has spiraled through the Arab world, with extraordinary results: following mass uprisings, the Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben-Ali has fled the country, while his counterpart Hosni Mubarak of Egypt decided to stand down with immediate effect. Meanwhile, Algeria – also ruled by a military dictatorship – has seen major riots, with several protestors killed, while similar demonstrations in Yemen have led President Saleh to announce that he will not seek another term in office.
Click the 3D book display to download Crisis in the Arab World, a free sampler of Yale books that discuss these three febrile regions.
In Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak(2011), Tarek Osman looks at the situation of his fellow young Egyptians – tech-savvy and full of passion, but deeply frustrated by the corrupt, economically stagnant Egyptian state.
In Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed (2008, updated 2011), Martin Evans and John Phillips ask how long Algerians will put up with their repressive military regime, whose only opposition consists of intermittent al-Qaeda attacks.
In Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes (2010), Victoria Clark analyses the prospects for a country with 40% unemployment, near-exhausted water supplies, and a long-running rebellion in the southern provinces.
Egyptian journalist Tarek Osman is, as you might guess, in Egypt. He's not been attacked or detained, and we were able to break through the chaos and put him in touch with WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show and PRI's The World, to give his take on the current political climate, having just published Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak.
Listen to the discussions on the rise and decline of Arab nationalism with WNYC and the Pharaohdom of Mubarak with PRI.
@David_Rogers: Everyone is abuzz with the Network Is Your Customer book launch, free chapters, reviews, and most importantly, grabbing a copy! Learn more on Twitter with #TNIYC and #sobelbrite hashtags, and be sure to check out the author’s site to catch up!
@Drudge_Report: Headlines like Matt Drudge’s “EGYPT ON THE BRINK” abound after protests erupted, calling for the end of President Mubarak’s term. Tarek Osman, author of our newly published Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak, has now written an op-ed for CNN.com on the current political climate.
