Robert F. Worth’s ‘A Rage for Order’

Kenneth M. Pollack in the New York Times:

This is the book on the Middle East you have been waiting to read.

“A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, From Tahrir Square to ISIS,” by Robert F. Worth, tells the story of the 2011 Arab Spring and its slide into autocracy and civil war better than I ever could have imagined its being told. The volume is remarkably slender for one of such drama and scope — beautifully written, Worth’s words scudding easily and gracefully across the pages. It is also a marvel of storytelling, with the chapters conjuring a poignancy fitting for the subject.

Worth, a former correspondent for The New York Times, employs the familiar journalistic conceit of telling the history of the Arab Spring by presenting the stories of different individuals whose lives became caught up in it. While the method is timeworn, it has rarely been done with such skill.

More here.