The Modern Arab World

A monumental new history of the twentieth-century Arab world, told through Arab voices.

Western commentators have long described the Arab world as uniquely disordered, defined by fanaticism, ignorance, and the cruelties of war and autocracy. The Modern Arab World provides a much-needed corrective. Prize-winning historian Andrew Arsan tells a new history of the Arab twentieth century—a story of political creativity and resourcefulness, hopes and dreams, bold ambitions and painful disappointments—as seen from the vantage point of the region’s inhabitants.

From the Ottoman Empire’s last years to the 2011 Arab uprisings, the people of the Arab world strove to define and redefine freedom: freedom from colonial rule, freedom from poverty and inequality, and freedom of speech, thought, and belief. Arsan gives voice to a varied cast of characters that spans from political leaders to intellectuals, activists, and ordinary men and women, showing how changing, sometimes conflicting ideas of freedom animated the anti-colonial nationalism of the early twentieth century, the Third World solidarities of decolonization, the new Islamism that emerged in the 1970s, and the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s and 2000s.

A gripping and panoramic history, The Modern Arab World is essential reading for understanding the region and the world today.