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 the National Magazine Award. Born and raised in Manhattan, he now lives in Washington D.C.

This is the book on the Middle East you have been waiting to read. [It] tells the story of the 2011 Arab Spring and its slide into autocracy and civil war better than I could ever imagine its being told. The volume is remarkably slender for one of such drama and scope - beautifully written . . . All great works of fiction are works of great philosophy, pondering the fundamentals of humanity. Few volumes of non-fiction ever achieve this, but Worth's does, touching essential human truths about the human condition . . . The writing is so beautiful and the storytelling so easy that you won't realize how much you are learning as you read. But there is no escaping the import of the stories. No way to read this marvellous book and not understand far more than you did before about this troubled region and the people struggling to find their way back to quiet lives

• Introduction - i: Introduction Unit - PART 1: REVOLTS Chapter - 1: One People (Egypt) Chapter - 2: Revenge (Libya) Chapter - 3: Sects (Syria) Chapter - 4: Prisoners of the Sheikh (Yemen) Unit - PART II: RESTORATIONS Chapter - 5: Brothers (Egypt) Chapter - 6: In the Caliph’s Shadow (Yemen, Syria) Chapter - 7: Reconciliation (Tunisia) Section - ii: Epilogue Section - iii: Time Line Section - iv: A Note on Sources Acknowledgements - v: Acknowledgments Index - vi: Index

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 the National Magazine Award. Born and raised in Manhattan, he now lives in Washington D.C.

This is the book on the Middle East you have been waiting to read. [It] tells the story of the 2011 Arab Spring and its slide into autocracy and civil war better than I could ever imagine its being told. The volume is remarkably slender for one of such drama and scope - beautifully written . . . All great works of fiction are works of great philosophy, pondering the fundamentals of humanity. Few volumes of non-fiction ever achieve this, but Worth's does, touching essential human truths about the human condition . . . The writing is so beautiful and the storytelling so easy that you won't realize how much you are learning as you read. But there is no escaping the import of the stories. No way to read this marvellous book and not understand far more than you did before about this troubled region and the people struggling to find their way back to quiet lives

• Introduction - i: Introduction Unit - PART 1: REVOLTS Chapter - 1: One People (Egypt) Chapter - 2: Revenge (Libya) Chapter - 3: Sects (Syria) Chapter - 4: Prisoners of the Sheikh (Yemen) Unit - PART II: RESTORATIONS Chapter - 5: Brothers (Egypt) Chapter - 6: In the Caliph’s Shadow (Yemen, Syria) Chapter - 7: Reconciliation (Tunisia) Section - ii: Epilogue Section - iii: Time Line Section - iv: A Note on Sources Acknowledgements - v: Acknowledgments Index - vi: Index