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Robert F. Worth spent fourteen years as a correspondent for The New York Times and was the paper's Beirut bureau chief from 2007 until 2011. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine and The New York Review of Books, he has twice been a finalist for a National Magazine Award. He mehr anzeigen lives in Washington, D.C. weniger anzeigen

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"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?… (mehr)
 
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MylesKesten | 5 weitere Rezensionen | Jan 23, 2024 |
A great account of the Arab Spring and it's aftermath (at least up until approx. 2015 or early 2016). It is partially (an attempt at) objective history, and partially a work of personal importance for the author, who weaves in his own experiences and, more importantly, the heartbreaking stories of average people who were either active participants in or victims of these uprisings.

Not a good book to read if you think Assad is the good guy who has done absolutely nothing wrong, or that all Syrians who stood up to him are Islamic terrorists, or that Qaddhafi was actually a pretty decent guy after all, or that Arabs can't handle democracy and should just accept their fate in whatever dictatorship they're in.… (mehr)
 
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zinama | 5 weitere Rezensionen | Sep 22, 2022 |
In some ways, I wish there had been more. A lot of stuff was familiar to me because I've read quite a few books about the Middle East but that just made it easier to place events and recall what happened. Overall, a good read.
 
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pacbox | 5 weitere Rezensionen | Jul 9, 2022 |
I’m chary of ‘literary journalism’ claims (once bitten, twice shy), but yeah. At times this acts like a tragic novel. A few of its human portraits are art + reality.

Interspersed is introductory material, so you don’t lose your footing even if you’re not up with current events (me) or with history.

Neither the ecstasy of the attempt, or the sadness of its failure, are smudged over or sacrificed one to the other.

I felt funny about some sentences, which inhibits me from 5*.

I read it in an afternoon and evening; it’s short and novelesque enough to want to do so.
… (mehr)
 
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Jakujin | 5 weitere Rezensionen | Aug 31, 2017 |

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