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We Are Your Soldiers: How Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World
A searing exploration of authoritarianism in the Middle East through the legacy of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s years in power in Cold War–era Egypt.
Gamal Abdel Nasser, the larger-than-life Egyptian president who ruled for eighteen years between the coup d’état he led in 1952 and his death in 1970, is best known for wresting the Suez Canal from the British and French empires and befriending such iconic revolutionaries as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Yet there is a darker side to Nasser’s regime. He was a brutal authoritarian, whose legacy lies at the heart of the violent and repressive order that still prevails throughout the Arab world today.
In We Are Your Soldiers , Alex Rowell focuses on seven countries—Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, and Libya—to reassess Nasser’s impact in the Arab sphere. Drawing on a deep reading of Arabic sources, extensive interviews, and material never before published in English, Rowell offers a radical reexamination of Nasser’s rule and a new understanding of the politics of the Middle East.
Gamal Abdel Nasser, the larger-than-life Egyptian president who ruled for eighteen years between the coup d’état he led in 1952 and his death in 1970, is best known for wresting the Suez Canal from the British and French empires and befriending such iconic revolutionaries as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Yet there is a darker side to Nasser’s regime. He was a brutal authoritarian, whose legacy lies at the heart of the violent and repressive order that still prevails throughout the Arab world today.
In We Are Your Soldiers , Alex Rowell focuses on seven countries—Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, and Libya—to reassess Nasser’s impact in the Arab sphere. Drawing on a deep reading of Arabic sources, extensive interviews, and material never before published in English, Rowell offers a radical reexamination of Nasser’s rule and a new understanding of the politics of the Middle East.
395 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 14, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
June 29, 2025
An enthralling exploration into the ascent and impact of Nasser and the poisonous ideology of Nasserism. From direct engagement in the tumultuous civil conflicts of Yemen and Lebanon to orchestrating the targeted elimination of numerous intellectuals, activists, rivals, business magnates, journalists, educators, assasinations and coups against the Jordanian monarchs, and the racist slaughter of Jews and Christians, Nasser's imprint on history is both profound and contentious.
Under Nasser's patronage, financial backing, and violent endorsement, figures synonymous with brutality and oppression such as Hafez al-Assad, Yasser Arafat, Muammar Gaddafi, and Saddam Hussein found support, amplifying the reach of authoritarianism and terror across the region. Despite Nasser's revolutionary rhetoric promising liberation, dignity, and prosperity, the reality for millions was a stark contrast, characterized by oppression, deprivation, and suffering.
This gripping narrative intricately weaves together the threads of Nasser's legacy, shedding light on the harrowing realities that persist in the region and reverberate globally. Essential reading for those seeking to comprehend the complex web of misery that engulfs this part of our world, and the far-reaching ramifications it entails.
Under Nasser's patronage, financial backing, and violent endorsement, figures synonymous with brutality and oppression such as Hafez al-Assad, Yasser Arafat, Muammar Gaddafi, and Saddam Hussein found support, amplifying the reach of authoritarianism and terror across the region. Despite Nasser's revolutionary rhetoric promising liberation, dignity, and prosperity, the reality for millions was a stark contrast, characterized by oppression, deprivation, and suffering.
This gripping narrative intricately weaves together the threads of Nasser's legacy, shedding light on the harrowing realities that persist in the region and reverberate globally. Essential reading for those seeking to comprehend the complex web of misery that engulfs this part of our world, and the far-reaching ramifications it entails.
September 19, 2024
[nb. I don't normally write in-depth reviews, but because my opinion on this book is so out of whack with most everyone else's, and because no one else has written a poor review yet, I decided to try to justify my opinion to provide what is an admittedly minority position on this book]
It would have been nice to like this book. No doubt, Alex Rowell’s prose generally made for easy, accessible, and generally entertaining reading. But approachable writing does not a good book make. Even ignoring the bizarre reference to the events of September 31, or the author’s repeated attempts to revive the word “especial”, We Are Your Soldiers is a deeply flawed and chaotic review of an equally flawed and chaotic regime.
At its crux, the book’s organization, well, I cannot complete this sentence because it lacks a sensible one. Rowell divides the book into eight sections, each of one to three chapters, with one section each for Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, and Libya, and two sections for Nasser’s Egypt. While a non-chronological approach isn’t inherently bad, Rowell fails to justify it here. The book zigs and zags across time, repeating the same 15 years half a dozen times, but from different focal points. This leads to information about one regime seeping in long after you’ve finished the section on that regime and giving you the answer to questions that by that point you can’t even remember if you had asked. Rowell does reference back. But that doesn't solve the problem that useful context about one country is missing when another is analyzed. Yet even accepting Rowell's organizational concept, the choice to do Iraq before Syria is baffling. Nasser’s interference in Iraq often stemmed from Syria, but the political union of Egypt and Syria hadn’t been established yet, leaving much of the section appearing to be nothing more than speculation at the time you read it.
And that’s another problem: The speculation. For nearly every coup and counter-coup in the book, Rowell speculates about Nasser’s involvement, whether he had pre-knowledge, whether he had an active hand, whether he promised support (whether active or tacit), and so on. To Rowell’s credit, by-and-large he acknowledged where he was guessing. Likewise, he usually noted what evidence was available to him. That said, the sources he used to reach those and other conclusions were unduly narrow. For instance, in his section on Libya, he relies almost exclusively on Egyptian sources, plus news articles and one Lebanese professor. How one can draw conclusions about Nasser’s impact on Libyans without consulting Libyans goes beyond me. All this combined to render many of Rowell's conclusions superficial and rushed.
Which gets me to my next critique: The book is superficial and rushed. While promising to be an in-depth look at Nasser’s influence over the Arab world and how it holds to this day, Rowell mostly focuses on dozens of isolated moments, with often just a paragraph or two to connect the years of intervening events. He then defines Nasser’s influence almost exclusively based on whether Nasser has effected a friendly regime. Shifting alliances may be mentioned, people and parties falling in and out of favor, sometimes even the occasional note that a leader has gained or lost mass support. But the conditions that led to that shift are rarely addressed, or are oversimplified to the success or failure of one war, as if the people of Jordan are so fickle and backward as to support the king if and only if his latest border skirmish with Israel or Palestine or Syria didn’t end in embarrassment. Who has time to care about hunger and jobs if the military is successful? That’s the only thing that directs opinion, clearly. And even when Rowell addresses Nasser’s efforts to win the minds of the people in other states, he merely mentions the fact that Nasser began broadcasting propaganda without analyzing the effect of that propaganda on the populace.
To be fair, Rowell does much better within Egypt itself. The second section on Egypt gives a succinct analysis of the domestic situation in Egypt, particularly in the aftermath of the Six Days War. And although he again focuses mostly on isolated events—Nasser’s aborted resignation and a student protest—he contextualizes them within the broader picture of 1967-68 Egypt, as aberrations from the otherwise political malaise that overtook the populace. But Egypt is only *of* the Arab world, not the Arab world on the whole, leaving the presence of this analysis here all the more glaring for demonstrating what this book lacks elsewhere. Had this analysis been interspersed in the other countries, the book would have been much more worthwhile.
If We Are Your Soldiers were billed as an exposé of Nasser’s intervention in neighboring states, it would have at least somewhat met its mission, albeit it still in a deeply unsatisfying way. But it promised more. The subtitle of the book is “How Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World.” But the Arab world is not just hard power. It also is its people. It also is the social and economic relationships that nurture, guide, and drive those people. By and large, that’s missing from this book, or handled superficially. And that’s why I have to give this book a 1/5. Like much of Nasser’s initiatives and dreams, it failed to realize its goals.
It would have been nice to like this book. No doubt, Alex Rowell’s prose generally made for easy, accessible, and generally entertaining reading. But approachable writing does not a good book make. Even ignoring the bizarre reference to the events of September 31, or the author’s repeated attempts to revive the word “especial”, We Are Your Soldiers is a deeply flawed and chaotic review of an equally flawed and chaotic regime.
At its crux, the book’s organization, well, I cannot complete this sentence because it lacks a sensible one. Rowell divides the book into eight sections, each of one to three chapters, with one section each for Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, and Libya, and two sections for Nasser’s Egypt. While a non-chronological approach isn’t inherently bad, Rowell fails to justify it here. The book zigs and zags across time, repeating the same 15 years half a dozen times, but from different focal points. This leads to information about one regime seeping in long after you’ve finished the section on that regime and giving you the answer to questions that by that point you can’t even remember if you had asked. Rowell does reference back. But that doesn't solve the problem that useful context about one country is missing when another is analyzed. Yet even accepting Rowell's organizational concept, the choice to do Iraq before Syria is baffling. Nasser’s interference in Iraq often stemmed from Syria, but the political union of Egypt and Syria hadn’t been established yet, leaving much of the section appearing to be nothing more than speculation at the time you read it.
And that’s another problem: The speculation. For nearly every coup and counter-coup in the book, Rowell speculates about Nasser’s involvement, whether he had pre-knowledge, whether he had an active hand, whether he promised support (whether active or tacit), and so on. To Rowell’s credit, by-and-large he acknowledged where he was guessing. Likewise, he usually noted what evidence was available to him. That said, the sources he used to reach those and other conclusions were unduly narrow. For instance, in his section on Libya, he relies almost exclusively on Egyptian sources, plus news articles and one Lebanese professor. How one can draw conclusions about Nasser’s impact on Libyans without consulting Libyans goes beyond me. All this combined to render many of Rowell's conclusions superficial and rushed.
Which gets me to my next critique: The book is superficial and rushed. While promising to be an in-depth look at Nasser’s influence over the Arab world and how it holds to this day, Rowell mostly focuses on dozens of isolated moments, with often just a paragraph or two to connect the years of intervening events. He then defines Nasser’s influence almost exclusively based on whether Nasser has effected a friendly regime. Shifting alliances may be mentioned, people and parties falling in and out of favor, sometimes even the occasional note that a leader has gained or lost mass support. But the conditions that led to that shift are rarely addressed, or are oversimplified to the success or failure of one war, as if the people of Jordan are so fickle and backward as to support the king if and only if his latest border skirmish with Israel or Palestine or Syria didn’t end in embarrassment. Who has time to care about hunger and jobs if the military is successful? That’s the only thing that directs opinion, clearly. And even when Rowell addresses Nasser’s efforts to win the minds of the people in other states, he merely mentions the fact that Nasser began broadcasting propaganda without analyzing the effect of that propaganda on the populace.
To be fair, Rowell does much better within Egypt itself. The second section on Egypt gives a succinct analysis of the domestic situation in Egypt, particularly in the aftermath of the Six Days War. And although he again focuses mostly on isolated events—Nasser’s aborted resignation and a student protest—he contextualizes them within the broader picture of 1967-68 Egypt, as aberrations from the otherwise political malaise that overtook the populace. But Egypt is only *of* the Arab world, not the Arab world on the whole, leaving the presence of this analysis here all the more glaring for demonstrating what this book lacks elsewhere. Had this analysis been interspersed in the other countries, the book would have been much more worthwhile.
If We Are Your Soldiers were billed as an exposé of Nasser’s intervention in neighboring states, it would have at least somewhat met its mission, albeit it still in a deeply unsatisfying way. But it promised more. The subtitle of the book is “How Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World.” But the Arab world is not just hard power. It also is its people. It also is the social and economic relationships that nurture, guide, and drive those people. By and large, that’s missing from this book, or handled superficially. And that’s why I have to give this book a 1/5. Like much of Nasser’s initiatives and dreams, it failed to realize its goals.
July 7, 2024
The Middle East has suffered immensely from the rule of authoritarian dictators. Their presence is such a longstanding matter of course that we hardly ask how they became so dominant in this region. These dictators include Saddam Hussein, dislodged from power by the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, swept away by the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011. Others like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad remain in power. Something in the regional political culture was rotten to produce such a full basket of dictatorships.
In the past I’ve blamed this largely on the shared experience of colonialism. The political instability of the region was shaped by the Sykes-Picot agreement that parceled out the collapsing Ottoman Empire to European powers at the end of World War I. The new nations of the Middle East were stuck with borders that didn’t make geographic sense, and so it was difficult to build cohesive states. States were further weakened by continued meddling by England and France. In We Are Your Soldiers: How Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World Alex Rowell makes a strong case that another cause should be added to the mix: the disastrous style of personal dictatorship that Gamal Abdel Nasser built and then succeeded in exporting around the region. These authoritarian dictatorships weren’t caused by historical necessity, but were a paradigm foisted on the region by Nasser.
Coming out of World War II Egypt was ruled by King Farouk, who had come to power in 1936 at the age of 16. He was an unserious playboy, unable to push back effectively against England, and in 1952 a group of “Free Officers” stepped in and took over Egypt. By most definitions it was a classic coup d’etat, but soon the event was wrapped in the language of “revolution”—a word that implies a popular and ideological basis for political change. When the core group of Free Officers took power, they put forward a trusted and older hand from within their ranks to take the leadership role, but after two years Gamal Abdel Nasser (then 36 years old) had taken control, leading to, as Rowell describes it, “...the transformation of what had been a military autocracy run by a council of officers into the personal dictatorship of an all-powerful Nasser.”
That phrase “personal dictatorship” is worth considering for a moment. Nasser was a charismatic leader, and in photos his youthful handsomeness and engaging smile come through clearly. He spoke to the Egyptian people in their native Arabic dialect, which might seem unremarkable until you learn that previous rulers communicated with native Egyptians at best in stiff formal Arabic. Rowell provides samples of Nasser’s speeches, including a famous one where he moves off script after an assassination attempt: “My blood is a sacrifice to you.... My life is a scrifice to you... Let them kill me, let them kill me... I would die right now with peace of mind, for all of you are Gamal Abdel Nasser....” It’s hard not to hear in those words an echo of past fascist and authoritarian equations of the identity of state and leader.
The flip side of this “I-am-you” charisma was his effort to eliminate any competitor for popular loyalty. This included an early crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, who (hard to believe) were early supporters of the Free Officer movement. All other political parties were soon banned, as was anything resembling a free press. The punishment for standing against Nasser was harsh, and included detention and brutal torture. Rowell includes accounts of torture for political activists at the Abu Zaabal detention camp in Egypt. Rowell draws out such a dense collection of facts and connections that it becomes impossible to deny the immense damage to civil society caused by Nasser. In Egypt he had taken over a civil society with immense promise. The political situation under King Farouk was by no means ideal, but there were talented journalists and intellectuals on the scene, springing from the Nahda, or “Arab Awakening,” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All that civic promise was squandered by Nasser and then in turn his successors Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.
So far this all relates to Egypt, but what makes We Are Your Soldiers significant is the way Rowell connects the dots between Nasser and the foundation of other authoritarian dictatorships in the region. He was an active meddler in the politics of the region throughout his 16 year reign (1954-70). He aided in the assassination of political figures and journalists outside Egypt who dared to challenge him. The wheel of personal dictatorship didn’t need to be invented over and over again. There is a stunning moment when Rowell notes how at the same time both Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad were supported and protected in Cairo by Nasser. Both of these dictators would follow the example of Nasser by coming to power through a faction of officers and then brutally eliminate dissent. Nasser continues to be best known for his dream of Arab Nationalism (envisioning that Arabic-speaking countries would join into one polity), but his deepest legacy was this model of dictatorship that brought devastation to civil societies through the use of violence and torture.
In a concluding chapter entitled “Second Time as Farce” Rowell shows how Muammar Ghaddafi too began as an acolyte of Nasser. He came to power with a copycat Free Officer movement in 1969 at age 28, and then immediately sent for Egyptian help in establishing his regime. In 1970, the final year of his life, Nasser warmly endorsed Ghaddafi as “the custodian of Arab nationalism.” He advised Ghaddafi to get rid of civilian government altogether and to concentrate power in his own hands. The eventual moral outrages of al-Ghaddafi are well known, but less understood is how such outrages were enabled by this linkage between personality and state, as encouraged by Nasser.
Somehow in our imagination Gamal Abdel Nasser stands apart from the brutality of Saddam Hussein, Hafez al-Assad, and Muammar al-Ghaddafi. It may be his genial smile or the music of Umm Kalthoum we hear in the background. Or maybe it’s the events of 1957 when Nasser stood up to the aggression of England, France, and Israel as he nationalized the Suez Canal against their wishes—and came away the winner. That single act galvanized the Arab world. But any leader whose inheritance for a region includes such a line of morally bankrupt dictators should not get a pass. Nasser had in his rhetorical quiver words that are popular now too: colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, feudalism. He spoke of resistance and called for social justice. Theoretically those are good words, but civil society is more delicate, and more complicated than slogans. Securing personal freedoms (as opposed to “National Freedom”) and protecting the open exchange of ideas isn’t easy since it doesn’t resolve quite so easily into chants. Wise leadership in all these national contexts would have been to start with what was already there, already working, and then to take steady, small steps in the direction of nurturing the good and building up economic well-being.
Because I enjoyed We Are Your Soldiers so much I picked up a related book that had sat on my shelf unread: The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, by Hisham Matar. This book functions as a memoir of the damage to civil society done by one personal dictatorship. In this case the country is Libya, and so the dictator is, of course, Muammar Ghaddafi. The author Hisham Matar and his family fled Libya in 1979, when it became clear that their business success and independent thinking wouldn’t be tolerated. Matar goes on to attend college in London, so this is the first step to his life as an exile. Returning many years later to Libya he learns about the education received by others under the tightening hold of Ghaddafi, such as that of his cousin:
After reading the prose narrative of Matar, overflowing with introspective asides and literary and artistic allusions that add depth, the mind reels at the idea that this consciousness could have easily been lost to such a regime. Yet others equally talented were indeed swallowed up by this senseless system. Matar expresses the sharp guilt of a person who got away and lived a “free life.”
Matar returned to Libya in 2012, in the brief edge of time between the fall of Ghaddafi and the descent of the country into further violence at the hands of militias. He seeks out reports of his disappeared father, who had been kidnapped from their family apartment in Cairo in 1990. The emotional weight of his disappearance on every member of the family becomes clear through the book. Nothing definitive is learned during this time in Libya, and we arrive only at the possibility that his father was among the 1,270 inmates massacred at Abu Salim prison in 1996. Thinking about the recent history of what we call the Middle East, we should imagine in our mind a conveyor belt of person after person disappearing into the Moloch jaws of Nasser’s destructive personal dictatorships.
In the past I’ve blamed this largely on the shared experience of colonialism. The political instability of the region was shaped by the Sykes-Picot agreement that parceled out the collapsing Ottoman Empire to European powers at the end of World War I. The new nations of the Middle East were stuck with borders that didn’t make geographic sense, and so it was difficult to build cohesive states. States were further weakened by continued meddling by England and France. In We Are Your Soldiers: How Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World Alex Rowell makes a strong case that another cause should be added to the mix: the disastrous style of personal dictatorship that Gamal Abdel Nasser built and then succeeded in exporting around the region. These authoritarian dictatorships weren’t caused by historical necessity, but were a paradigm foisted on the region by Nasser.
Coming out of World War II Egypt was ruled by King Farouk, who had come to power in 1936 at the age of 16. He was an unserious playboy, unable to push back effectively against England, and in 1952 a group of “Free Officers” stepped in and took over Egypt. By most definitions it was a classic coup d’etat, but soon the event was wrapped in the language of “revolution”—a word that implies a popular and ideological basis for political change. When the core group of Free Officers took power, they put forward a trusted and older hand from within their ranks to take the leadership role, but after two years Gamal Abdel Nasser (then 36 years old) had taken control, leading to, as Rowell describes it, “...the transformation of what had been a military autocracy run by a council of officers into the personal dictatorship of an all-powerful Nasser.”
That phrase “personal dictatorship” is worth considering for a moment. Nasser was a charismatic leader, and in photos his youthful handsomeness and engaging smile come through clearly. He spoke to the Egyptian people in their native Arabic dialect, which might seem unremarkable until you learn that previous rulers communicated with native Egyptians at best in stiff formal Arabic. Rowell provides samples of Nasser’s speeches, including a famous one where he moves off script after an assassination attempt: “My blood is a sacrifice to you.... My life is a scrifice to you... Let them kill me, let them kill me... I would die right now with peace of mind, for all of you are Gamal Abdel Nasser....” It’s hard not to hear in those words an echo of past fascist and authoritarian equations of the identity of state and leader.
The flip side of this “I-am-you” charisma was his effort to eliminate any competitor for popular loyalty. This included an early crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, who (hard to believe) were early supporters of the Free Officer movement. All other political parties were soon banned, as was anything resembling a free press. The punishment for standing against Nasser was harsh, and included detention and brutal torture. Rowell includes accounts of torture for political activists at the Abu Zaabal detention camp in Egypt. Rowell draws out such a dense collection of facts and connections that it becomes impossible to deny the immense damage to civil society caused by Nasser. In Egypt he had taken over a civil society with immense promise. The political situation under King Farouk was by no means ideal, but there were talented journalists and intellectuals on the scene, springing from the Nahda, or “Arab Awakening,” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All that civic promise was squandered by Nasser and then in turn his successors Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.
So far this all relates to Egypt, but what makes We Are Your Soldiers significant is the way Rowell connects the dots between Nasser and the foundation of other authoritarian dictatorships in the region. He was an active meddler in the politics of the region throughout his 16 year reign (1954-70). He aided in the assassination of political figures and journalists outside Egypt who dared to challenge him. The wheel of personal dictatorship didn’t need to be invented over and over again. There is a stunning moment when Rowell notes how at the same time both Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad were supported and protected in Cairo by Nasser. Both of these dictators would follow the example of Nasser by coming to power through a faction of officers and then brutally eliminate dissent. Nasser continues to be best known for his dream of Arab Nationalism (envisioning that Arabic-speaking countries would join into one polity), but his deepest legacy was this model of dictatorship that brought devastation to civil societies through the use of violence and torture.
In a concluding chapter entitled “Second Time as Farce” Rowell shows how Muammar Ghaddafi too began as an acolyte of Nasser. He came to power with a copycat Free Officer movement in 1969 at age 28, and then immediately sent for Egyptian help in establishing his regime. In 1970, the final year of his life, Nasser warmly endorsed Ghaddafi as “the custodian of Arab nationalism.” He advised Ghaddafi to get rid of civilian government altogether and to concentrate power in his own hands. The eventual moral outrages of al-Ghaddafi are well known, but less understood is how such outrages were enabled by this linkage between personality and state, as encouraged by Nasser.
Somehow in our imagination Gamal Abdel Nasser stands apart from the brutality of Saddam Hussein, Hafez al-Assad, and Muammar al-Ghaddafi. It may be his genial smile or the music of Umm Kalthoum we hear in the background. Or maybe it’s the events of 1957 when Nasser stood up to the aggression of England, France, and Israel as he nationalized the Suez Canal against their wishes—and came away the winner. That single act galvanized the Arab world. But any leader whose inheritance for a region includes such a line of morally bankrupt dictators should not get a pass. Nasser had in his rhetorical quiver words that are popular now too: colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, feudalism. He spoke of resistance and called for social justice. Theoretically those are good words, but civil society is more delicate, and more complicated than slogans. Securing personal freedoms (as opposed to “National Freedom”) and protecting the open exchange of ideas isn’t easy since it doesn’t resolve quite so easily into chants. Wise leadership in all these national contexts would have been to start with what was already there, already working, and then to take steady, small steps in the direction of nurturing the good and building up economic well-being.
Because I enjoyed We Are Your Soldiers so much I picked up a related book that had sat on my shelf unread: The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, by Hisham Matar. This book functions as a memoir of the damage to civil society done by one personal dictatorship. In this case the country is Libya, and so the dictator is, of course, Muammar Ghaddafi. The author Hisham Matar and his family fled Libya in 1979, when it became clear that their business success and independent thinking wouldn’t be tolerated. Matar goes on to attend college in London, so this is the first step to his life as an exile. Returning many years later to Libya he learns about the education received by others under the tightening hold of Ghaddafi, such as that of his cousin:
He had witnessed the militarization of schools, where, as a young boy, he had to turn up in military uniform and crawl on the ground with a rifle before morning class. He had seen the banning of books, music, and films, the closure of theaters and cinemas, the outlawing of football, and all the other countless ways in which the Libyan dictatorship, like a crazed jealous lover, infiltrated every aspect of public and private life.
After reading the prose narrative of Matar, overflowing with introspective asides and literary and artistic allusions that add depth, the mind reels at the idea that this consciousness could have easily been lost to such a regime. Yet others equally talented were indeed swallowed up by this senseless system. Matar expresses the sharp guilt of a person who got away and lived a “free life.”
Matar returned to Libya in 2012, in the brief edge of time between the fall of Ghaddafi and the descent of the country into further violence at the hands of militias. He seeks out reports of his disappeared father, who had been kidnapped from their family apartment in Cairo in 1990. The emotional weight of his disappearance on every member of the family becomes clear through the book. Nothing definitive is learned during this time in Libya, and we arrive only at the possibility that his father was among the 1,270 inmates massacred at Abu Salim prison in 1996. Thinking about the recent history of what we call the Middle East, we should imagine in our mind a conveyor belt of person after person disappearing into the Moloch jaws of Nasser’s destructive personal dictatorships.
December 16, 2025
في خضم المعركة الدائرة بينه وبين كمال خلف الطويل، واجهت الكتاب برؤوس أقلام عن مآخذي على كتابه، لكنه رد عليّ باقتباس رائع، أنا أرى حقًا أنه جدير بي أن أراجع به الكتاب لعبقريّته وتكثيفه، قال لي، أليكس راؤول "شكراً على التعليق. على قولة أورويل، كل كتاب خيبة."
يكفيني أن أنقل لكم فكرة ألمعيّة من أفكار الكاتب، بعدما عرض على مدار 357 صفحة من المتن لإرث الناصرية المجرم في حق الإخوان المسلمين، ينتهي به افتراضه أن، أحمد الشرع، صورة من صور الإرث الناصري.. عودوا إلى قراءة أحمد رائف ومحمد جلال كشك ومايّلز كوبلاند في تناول الناصرية، فهم على كل حال معذورون لأسباب عدة، أو مفهومون، ولكن ما عُذر كاتبنا بعد سبعون عامًا أن يكتب مثل هذا الهراء؟
يكفيني أن أنقل لكم فكرة ألمعيّة من أفكار الكاتب، بعدما عرض على مدار 357 صفحة من المتن لإرث الناصرية المجرم في حق الإخوان المسلمين، ينتهي به افتراضه أن، أحمد الشرع، صورة من صور الإرث الناصري.. عودوا إلى قراءة أحمد رائف ومحمد جلال كشك ومايّلز كوبلاند في تناول الناصرية، فهم على كل حال معذورون لأسباب عدة، أو مفهومون، ولكن ما عُذر كاتبنا بعد سبعون عامًا أن يكتب مثل هذا الهراء؟
June 8, 2025
Eye opening book on the tyrant Jamal Abdelnasser and how we are still paying for his tyranny even today.
June 10, 2024
Essential book on Nasser's largely brutal and influential legacy in the Arab World.
Podcast episode with author: https://youtu.be/jm_4J4oRSl4
Podcast episode with author: https://youtu.be/jm_4J4oRSl4
November 10, 2024
Very illuminating
March 1, 2025
Chilling, if a little dismissive of western intervention in Iraq and Libya in the final chapters, and puzzling to end on the Libyan chapter.
Read
December 12, 2025كتاب به معلومات كثيرة لكن صرت أشكك كثيرا بالمؤرخين الغربيين الجدد
January 19, 2026
3.5 ⭐️
Very relevant book, super important information. Didn’t always grip my attention though .
Very relevant book, super important information. Didn’t always grip my attention though .
August 8, 2024
There are some regions in the world that never seem to get their act together. There’s Subsaharan Africa. And Latin America. And then there’s the Arab countries. Many of them are blessed with oil wealth, but this has not led any of them into becoming a stable democracy with rule of law. Many of them are barely functional basket cases, failed states (particularly Irak, Syria, Libya and Yemen). Others appear to get by just barely (like Lebanon or Jordan). And then there’s Egypt. I hazard to say there’s no former great empire that finds itself so reduced in stature. By its population it should have had a leadership role towards the rest of Arab nations. And it did, for a brief while, in the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser (1952-1970). Although Nasser had a foundational role in modern Egypt, he is a little studied figure. This biography aims to fill a gap. It also aims to explain much that has happened in the Levant for the past 70 years.
Nasser was clearly an intelligent, hard working visionary. Although he came to be associated with secular government, in his early days he was quite close to political Islam. Before coming to power Nasser was a conspirator, always involved in coup attempts with other junior military officers, including attempted or actual murders. This didn’t change later on: he had no respect for the lives of others and had no compunctions about promoting or ordering massacres not only of enemies, but also of inconvenient people.
When Nasser and his fellow “free officers” took power in 1952, after overthrowing King Farouk they undid a system with many incipient democratic elements that might have given rise to a parliamentary monarchy. They replaced it with a military dictatorship without elections, without a Constitution, without a Bill of Rights, a template for what would later happen in more extreme forms all over the region. Initially Nasser was just a member of a military Junta. However in 1954 he took the lead over his peers, along with the trappings of absolute power, including a Stalinist-style personality cult. He achieved his apotheosis in the second half of the fifties, between the Suez victory of 1956 (in reality more because of the US objecting to military action by the UK, France and Israel against Egypt due to the nationalization of the company that operated the Suez Canal) and the creation of the United Arab Republic of 1958 (a union between Egypt and Syria). After that union came apart (because Egypt saw Syria as a northern province to be exploited rather than as an equal), Nasserism started to unravel, a process that culminated in the 6 day war in 1967.
Nasser’s preference for achieving his goals through violence never went away. Not only in Egypt, which he turned into a police state, but in many other Arab countries. The starting point was the Baghdad Pact of 1955, a defense treaty similar to NATO for middle and Central European countries. Because it allowed Britain to intervene in defense of its members if attacked by the Soviets or their proxies, Nasser opposed Iraq being a party of the Pact. After being ignored by Nuri as-Said, the Iraqi prime minister, a senior figure who had led Arab troops in WWI against the Turks, Nasser followed his coup template by sponsoring disaffected free officers in their conspiracies. This ended in the massacre of the royal family (Hashemite cousins to the kings of Jordan) and prime minister Nuri, the establishment of a fierce dictatorship and the eventual takeover by the Baath Party, that would later enable Saddam Hussein to establish himself as supreme ruler. A similar course of action befell Syria, with the Baath taking power and the Assad family establishing a murderous hereditary tyranny possibly as bad as that of the North Koreans. Interestingly, there was a time in which both Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad were in Cairo, both on Nasser’s payroll for doing his work.
King Hussein of Jordan barely survived multiple attempts on his life by disaffected Jordanians and Syrians, all sponsored by Nasser, who was a born meddler, who didn’t believe in the sovereignty of other nations but always felt it his duty to become involved in matters not appertaining to him, in all cases worsening them. In spite of his apparently open countenance, he was secretive and would often shake a man’s hand before giving the go-ahead for this murder. In this he was similar to Fidel Castro, but Nasser was much more successful than he, since he had greater resources at his disposal and the US was less prone to intervene in the Middle East rather than in Latin America. Nasser’s actions made it impossible for Lebanon to survive as a functioning country, and he is as much to blame as anyone (including the Syrians, the Iranians and the Israelis) for the country’s civil war of 1975 to 1990, from which it has never really recovered. Similarly in Yemen, where Nasser earned Egypt the dubious distinction of being the first country since imperial Japan in China in using chemical weapons (nerve gas and mustard gas) against civilians. Perhaps (it is arguable, but perhaps) Nasser’s worse legacy was the last. In 1969 he sponsored a coup in Libya against king Idris by a group of officers that included a self-styled colonel, Muammar Gaddafi, who he then assisted in setting up a police state based on Egypt’s. There’s an almost noir vignette in the book, where Nasser is holding a meeting with King Hussein, Gaddafi and other Arab leaders, and, as Hussein is about to enter the meeting room, Gaddafi proposes that all present murder Hussein, an initiative from which he is dissuaded by the host, who by then has become closer to the Jordan king, although this closeness led to Jordan’s involvement in the 6 day war and thence to the loss of the West Bank of Jerusalem. Needless to say, Nasser’s support of Gaddafi was not altruistic by any means: he intended to use Libya’s oil wealth to finance further military adventures and to subsidize the Egyptian state, which was failing due to bone-headed “Arab socialism”.
Nasser’s legacy is rather foul: he left in Egypt a dictatorship that, through various iterations, survives to this day, with a sclerotic state and perennially underperforming economy. Doubtless, some of these attributes would have prevailed even in the absence of Nasser, but probably not to the same extent. He broke the political regimes in Syria and Iraq, which when he came about had some democratic elements, setting them up for the tyrannies that would later befall them. He supported Gaddafi and helped him take over above internal rivals, thus leaving Libya to be tortured for decades by this Arab Caligula. He sponsored civil wars in Lebanon and Yemen that still haven’t fully played out. He promoted the 6 day war of 1967, which sunk the territorial settlement between Palestinians and Israelis set by the UN, because of Israel’s crushing victory. He promoted the most militant factions of the Palestinian population, that would later perpetrate such heinous crimes as the Black September massacre of Israeli Olympians in 1972, and the subsequent terrible retaliations by the Israelis. This book is an indictment of Nasser and of Arab Nationalism as it played out under his aegis and that of his followers and successors. There doesn’t seem to have been any upside from his policies and ideas. Sad, sad monument to a once respected leader.
Nasser was clearly an intelligent, hard working visionary. Although he came to be associated with secular government, in his early days he was quite close to political Islam. Before coming to power Nasser was a conspirator, always involved in coup attempts with other junior military officers, including attempted or actual murders. This didn’t change later on: he had no respect for the lives of others and had no compunctions about promoting or ordering massacres not only of enemies, but also of inconvenient people.
When Nasser and his fellow “free officers” took power in 1952, after overthrowing King Farouk they undid a system with many incipient democratic elements that might have given rise to a parliamentary monarchy. They replaced it with a military dictatorship without elections, without a Constitution, without a Bill of Rights, a template for what would later happen in more extreme forms all over the region. Initially Nasser was just a member of a military Junta. However in 1954 he took the lead over his peers, along with the trappings of absolute power, including a Stalinist-style personality cult. He achieved his apotheosis in the second half of the fifties, between the Suez victory of 1956 (in reality more because of the US objecting to military action by the UK, France and Israel against Egypt due to the nationalization of the company that operated the Suez Canal) and the creation of the United Arab Republic of 1958 (a union between Egypt and Syria). After that union came apart (because Egypt saw Syria as a northern province to be exploited rather than as an equal), Nasserism started to unravel, a process that culminated in the 6 day war in 1967.
Nasser’s preference for achieving his goals through violence never went away. Not only in Egypt, which he turned into a police state, but in many other Arab countries. The starting point was the Baghdad Pact of 1955, a defense treaty similar to NATO for middle and Central European countries. Because it allowed Britain to intervene in defense of its members if attacked by the Soviets or their proxies, Nasser opposed Iraq being a party of the Pact. After being ignored by Nuri as-Said, the Iraqi prime minister, a senior figure who had led Arab troops in WWI against the Turks, Nasser followed his coup template by sponsoring disaffected free officers in their conspiracies. This ended in the massacre of the royal family (Hashemite cousins to the kings of Jordan) and prime minister Nuri, the establishment of a fierce dictatorship and the eventual takeover by the Baath Party, that would later enable Saddam Hussein to establish himself as supreme ruler. A similar course of action befell Syria, with the Baath taking power and the Assad family establishing a murderous hereditary tyranny possibly as bad as that of the North Koreans. Interestingly, there was a time in which both Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad were in Cairo, both on Nasser’s payroll for doing his work.
King Hussein of Jordan barely survived multiple attempts on his life by disaffected Jordanians and Syrians, all sponsored by Nasser, who was a born meddler, who didn’t believe in the sovereignty of other nations but always felt it his duty to become involved in matters not appertaining to him, in all cases worsening them. In spite of his apparently open countenance, he was secretive and would often shake a man’s hand before giving the go-ahead for this murder. In this he was similar to Fidel Castro, but Nasser was much more successful than he, since he had greater resources at his disposal and the US was less prone to intervene in the Middle East rather than in Latin America. Nasser’s actions made it impossible for Lebanon to survive as a functioning country, and he is as much to blame as anyone (including the Syrians, the Iranians and the Israelis) for the country’s civil war of 1975 to 1990, from which it has never really recovered. Similarly in Yemen, where Nasser earned Egypt the dubious distinction of being the first country since imperial Japan in China in using chemical weapons (nerve gas and mustard gas) against civilians. Perhaps (it is arguable, but perhaps) Nasser’s worse legacy was the last. In 1969 he sponsored a coup in Libya against king Idris by a group of officers that included a self-styled colonel, Muammar Gaddafi, who he then assisted in setting up a police state based on Egypt’s. There’s an almost noir vignette in the book, where Nasser is holding a meeting with King Hussein, Gaddafi and other Arab leaders, and, as Hussein is about to enter the meeting room, Gaddafi proposes that all present murder Hussein, an initiative from which he is dissuaded by the host, who by then has become closer to the Jordan king, although this closeness led to Jordan’s involvement in the 6 day war and thence to the loss of the West Bank of Jerusalem. Needless to say, Nasser’s support of Gaddafi was not altruistic by any means: he intended to use Libya’s oil wealth to finance further military adventures and to subsidize the Egyptian state, which was failing due to bone-headed “Arab socialism”.
Nasser’s legacy is rather foul: he left in Egypt a dictatorship that, through various iterations, survives to this day, with a sclerotic state and perennially underperforming economy. Doubtless, some of these attributes would have prevailed even in the absence of Nasser, but probably not to the same extent. He broke the political regimes in Syria and Iraq, which when he came about had some democratic elements, setting them up for the tyrannies that would later befall them. He supported Gaddafi and helped him take over above internal rivals, thus leaving Libya to be tortured for decades by this Arab Caligula. He sponsored civil wars in Lebanon and Yemen that still haven’t fully played out. He promoted the 6 day war of 1967, which sunk the territorial settlement between Palestinians and Israelis set by the UN, because of Israel’s crushing victory. He promoted the most militant factions of the Palestinian population, that would later perpetrate such heinous crimes as the Black September massacre of Israeli Olympians in 1972, and the subsequent terrible retaliations by the Israelis. This book is an indictment of Nasser and of Arab Nationalism as it played out under his aegis and that of his followers and successors. There doesn’t seem to have been any upside from his policies and ideas. Sad, sad monument to a once respected leader.
December 25, 2023
بعد قيام الثورة والغاء الملكية في العراق نزلت الجماهير في الشوارع، هتفت في 14 يوليو/تموز: "نحن جنودك يا جمال عبد الناصر"، وهو تحريف أنيق لكلمات نوري لصلاح سالم قبل ثلاث سنوات. أصبحت المظاهرات المطالبة بالوحدة مع الجمهورية العربية المتحدة ورفع صور عملاقة لعبد الناصر حدثًا يوميًا. ونشرت صحيفة نيويورك تايمز صورة لدبابة عراقية تحمل وجه عبدالناصر.
تم تغيير اسم شارع الملك فيصل، أحد الشوارع الرئيسية في بغداد، إلى شارع جمال عبد الناصر، في لفتة رمزية واضحة بذاتها
أثر جمال عبدالناصر لا يمكن إنكاره ويتحمل وزر كثير من ابتلاءات العرب ولكن الكاتب تحامل بعض الشيء في رأيي واستعن حتى بالغير مؤكد ليخرجه في صورة سيئة جدا (وهو سيء فعلا بدون الاشياء الغير مؤكده) حتى في الي ما له دخل أو لها اسباب وسياقات داخليه جعلها من تخطيطه
تم تغيير اسم شارع الملك فيصل، أحد الشوارع الرئيسية في بغداد، إلى شارع جمال عبد الناصر، في لفتة رمزية واضحة بذاتها
أثر جمال عبدالناصر لا يمكن إنكاره ويتحمل وزر كثير من ابتلاءات العرب ولكن الكاتب تحامل بعض الشيء في رأيي واستعن حتى بالغير مؤكد ليخرجه في صورة سيئة جدا (وهو سيء فعلا بدون الاشياء الغير مؤكده) حتى في الي ما له دخل أو لها اسباب وسياقات داخليه جعلها من تخطيطه
November 20, 2024
I'm of two minds on this book. It does a good job of telling the recent histories of many Middle Eastern countries, providing context for understanding many of today's conflicts (e.g., linking today's Houthi rebels to Yemen's civil war). Rowell's organization of the book by country helped with this, though it did require me to reset the timeline in my head each time I started a new chapter.
However, in each of these country's histories, it seems that Rowell's thesis is that Nasser is the root cause for everything that went wrong. I wouldn't argue that Nasser had his hand in a lot of bad events in the '60's, but Rowell's point of view feels a bit reductionist and so misses out on other contributing factors. It was interesting see the differences how Rowell and Rashid Khalidi in his The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017 describe the 1967 Six-Day War and the formation of the PLO. Rowell has Nasser as the central character of both. Khalidi just briefly mentions Nasser while railing about Israel and the CIA.
In the end, Rowell tells good, if a bit unbalanced, histories. It's a 3.25-3.5 book for me.
However, in each of these country's histories, it seems that Rowell's thesis is that Nasser is the root cause for everything that went wrong. I wouldn't argue that Nasser had his hand in a lot of bad events in the '60's, but Rowell's point of view feels a bit reductionist and so misses out on other contributing factors. It was interesting see the differences how Rowell and Rashid Khalidi in his The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017 describe the 1967 Six-Day War and the formation of the PLO. Rowell has Nasser as the central character of both. Khalidi just briefly mentions Nasser while railing about Israel and the CIA.
In the end, Rowell tells good, if a bit unbalanced, histories. It's a 3.25-3.5 book for me.
November 13, 2023
Gamal Abdel Nasser burst onto the international stage in 1952 when he led the coup d'état that overthrew King Farouk, introducing revolutionary politics that culminated in the seizure of the Suez Canal and the ouster of British troops from Egyptian soil. Charismatic and larger than life, he was wildly popular for these victories and the many reforms and improvements he brought to his country. But in this biography, Alex Rowell demonstrates that Nasser was willing to resort to any means from propaganda to instigating riots, terror, and chemical warfare against other sovereign nations to achieve his dream of an “Arab nationalist republic in the Nasserist mold.” Rowell offers disturbing documentation of how Nasser operated in his efforts to see his vision come to fruition and points to the various reasons he failed to achieve his goal.
This is an engrossing and sobering read that will shed light on Nasser’s outsized influence in Arab politics and how his legacy has played out to this day.
Author and Biographer Alex Rowell is a lifelong resident of the Middle East and a journalist and author in Lebanon. He has written for the BBC, the Economist, and the Washington Post, and is an editor at the Washington, DC–based magazine New Lines.
Thank you to W.W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for providing this eARC.
This is an engrossing and sobering read that will shed light on Nasser’s outsized influence in Arab politics and how his legacy has played out to this day.
Author and Biographer Alex Rowell is a lifelong resident of the Middle East and a journalist and author in Lebanon. He has written for the BBC, the Economist, and the Washington Post, and is an editor at the Washington, DC–based magazine New Lines.
Thank you to W.W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for providing this eARC.
November 14, 2023
My personal awareness of the politics of the Middle East started with the Yom Kippur War in 1973 (I was 11 years old), so I found this account of Nasser's influence on numerous countries (Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon and Libya) a fascinating primer on the Arab world of the 50s and 60s. It's a bit hard to keep track of all the coups and assassinations, but there are plenty of good stories here (mostly horrific).
I was also a bit depressed to see how opposition to brutal regimes often comes from advocates of liberal democracy, but that ultimately a vicious autocrat with another label ends up in charge. And we have seen this cycle repeated with the Arab Spring.
The book is definitely a (probably deserved) takedown of any myths regarding Nasser's benevolence or idealism, but shows him as seeking power at any cost. But Mr. Rowell didn't quite explain why Nasser remained such a revered figure in Egypt long after his death in 1970. When I travelled to Egypt in 1984, the Let's Go Travel Guide explained that while Anwar Sadat was revered in the US, the picture that was hung in many Egyptian homes was Gamal Abdel Nasser's. Apparently many Egyptians could forgive the brutality of the regime either because they were direct beneficiaries or because they were true believers.
Thanks to netgalley for providing an early copy for review.
I was also a bit depressed to see how opposition to brutal regimes often comes from advocates of liberal democracy, but that ultimately a vicious autocrat with another label ends up in charge. And we have seen this cycle repeated with the Arab Spring.
The book is definitely a (probably deserved) takedown of any myths regarding Nasser's benevolence or idealism, but shows him as seeking power at any cost. But Mr. Rowell didn't quite explain why Nasser remained such a revered figure in Egypt long after his death in 1970. When I travelled to Egypt in 1984, the Let's Go Travel Guide explained that while Anwar Sadat was revered in the US, the picture that was hung in many Egyptian homes was Gamal Abdel Nasser's. Apparently many Egyptians could forgive the brutality of the regime either because they were direct beneficiaries or because they were true believers.
Thanks to netgalley for providing an early copy for review.
February 5, 2026
While it reads with the pacing of a narrative, it is actually a work of non-fiction history. The title is a direct reference to the popular chant of Nasser’s supporters, and the book explores how his "cult of personality" and political style reshaped the entire Middle East.
Considered a bad - ass amongst his growing personality. He became the second President of Egypt from 1954 to 1970, surviving a 1954 assassination attempt by a Muslim Brotherhood member.
Nassar suffered a heart attack and died in 1970. His funeral in Cairo drew almost 6 million mouners , and prompted an outpouring of grief across the Arab world. He was succeeded by Anwar Sadat until his assassination by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad on 6 October 1981.
If you're a lover of military history this is a must read.
Considered a bad - ass amongst his growing personality. He became the second President of Egypt from 1954 to 1970, surviving a 1954 assassination attempt by a Muslim Brotherhood member.
Nassar suffered a heart attack and died in 1970. His funeral in Cairo drew almost 6 million mouners , and prompted an outpouring of grief across the Arab world. He was succeeded by Anwar Sadat until his assassination by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad on 6 October 1981.
If you're a lover of military history this is a must read.
October 17, 2025
This book is a little too journalistic for my tastes but nevertheless I found that I enjoyed it quite a bit. It is predominantly focused on Nasser’s interventions in other Arab countries, both explicit and secretive. I wish there was less focus on coups and more on the lasting cultural impact of Nasser’s regime and the lasting institutions that he created and promoted across the Arab world.
Nevertheless I think the author very convincingly makes the case that Nasser and his government interfered incessantly across the Arab world to further Nasser’s power and strike down those that opposed him. Overall a highly recommended read.
Nevertheless I think the author very convincingly makes the case that Nasser and his government interfered incessantly across the Arab world to further Nasser’s power and strike down those that opposed him. Overall a highly recommended read.
January 16, 2025
An interesting way to explore the explosion of Arab Nationalism across the region. Like many a history book, It is a scramble of names and dates you cannot remember. I wanted more time spent exploring Nasser personally and the cult surrounding him.
There seems a somewhat reluctance to admit any succeses of any Arab nationalist leaders. The last chapter on Gaddafi and Libya seemed like a chapter out of David Cameron's personal diary.
The chapter on chemical weapons was the height of Rowell's storytelling. I was the rest of the book was just as engaging (Lebanon chapter was pretty good too).
There seems a somewhat reluctance to admit any succeses of any Arab nationalist leaders. The last chapter on Gaddafi and Libya seemed like a chapter out of David Cameron's personal diary.
The chapter on chemical weapons was the height of Rowell's storytelling. I was the rest of the book was just as engaging (Lebanon chapter was pretty good too).
April 10, 2025
Expertly written piece about a larger than life figure of Gamal Abdel Nasser, with the particular focus on Nasser as tyrant and the leader of the police state as well as his external policy and profound influence on the internal affairs of six other Arabic countries: Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Libya, Lebanon and Yemen. Through a well researched and nuanced analysis, Alex Rowell masterfully manages to show how the ghost of Nasser still looms large over the current state of Arab world, even after the half century from his death.
January 11, 2026
Discussed Nasser and pan-Arabism's effects across the Middle East during the early Cold War. I appreciated how thorough it was, but the excessive inclusion of every detail of every event (names, dates, the range of countries included) made the narrative difficult to follow, especially when events were discussed in the perspective of different countries across chapters. While it was informative, I would not recommend it to someone who doesn't already have some baseline knowledge about the key players of 1950s-60s Middle East (like me when I first read this).
June 21, 2024
Quite a devastating indictment of Nasser's personal involvement in the destabilization of neighboring countries. This book is much more about relationships than about policies, and illustrates just how influential the former have been in sustaining injustice in the Arab world. I appreciated the inclusion of Libya and especially Yemen, which are often overlooked in wide-angle histories of the region.
July 14, 2025
Since I’m not very familiar with the modern history of the Middle East, the book’s clear and engaging style was really helpful in allowing me to follow the historical developments chronologically. It definitely encouraged me to continue reading more on the topic.
The book clearly takes an anti-Nasser stance. As I mentioned, I’m not well-versed in the political history of the modern Middle East, so this perspective might bother some readers.
The book clearly takes an anti-Nasser stance. As I mentioned, I’m not well-versed in the political history of the modern Middle East, so this perspective might bother some readers.
January 5, 2026
Very interesting read about a topic I knew almost nothing about. Tbh I hadn't even heard of Gamal Abdel Nasser before this book. The author provides a compelling case that he is responsible and or influential for much of the situation in the Middle East today. Excited to read more books on this topic now
November 28, 2023
This was really easy to read and told the story of Nasser and his long reach in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, and Lebanon, as well as his failures in his confrontations with Israel. A lot of historical what ifs given that Nasser died at the age of 52 in 1972.
January 5, 2024
This is interesting, but it's so so heavy on the "Egypt was so happy and peaceful under British occupation, so how dare they try to govern themselves?" which I really hate.
The way the author seems to infantalise every single Arab country give strong White-Man's-Burden vibes.
The way the author seems to infantalise every single Arab country give strong White-Man's-Burden vibes.
March 29, 2024
As surprising a read as if a North Korean wrote a book on Margaret Thatcher. It has some facts and is written reasonably well, but there's a shriek in the author's voice even when discussing the most mundane that I can't imagine he walks around hijabis comfortably.
January 7, 2025
An amazing book that reads like a thriller and illuminates the recent history of the entire Middle East. As I finished it I felt I wanted to read it again immediately to capture even better all its twists and turns.
March 16, 2024
Good book
More Arab foreign policy
More Arab foreign policy
March 23, 2024
An interesting look into an aspect of history I haven't thought much about, but at times, got lost in the minutiae of Arab intellectual life
Read
March 31, 2024Worth reading. Longer review forthcoming.
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