The Arab Winter A Tragedy

Why the conventional wisdom about the Arab Spring is wrong The Arab Spring promised to end dictatorship and bring self-government to people across the Middle East. Yet everywhere except Tunisia it led to either renewed dictatorship, civil war, extremist terror, or all three. In The Arab Winter, Noah Feldman argues that the Arab Spring was nevertheless not an unmitigated failure, much less an inevitable one. Rather, it was a noble, tragic series of events in which, for the first time in recent Middle Eastern history, Arabic-speaking peoples took free, collective political action as they sought to achieve self-determination. Focusing on Egypt, the Syrian civil war, the rise and fall of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and Tunisia, Feldman provides an original account of the Arab Spring, showing that we must not let its tragic outcome disguise its inherent human worth or its historical importance.