Read Any Good Revolutions Lately?

[In the run-up to the run-off, I had been reviewing the past year's events in print and online. But, as I wrote the following, the Egyptian judges overturned the parliamentary elections (well some of them). What follows is not my comment on the current situation (counter-revolution?, coup?, just the messiness of transitioning from revolution to democracy?).  That will come later, if it is not beyond my abilities.]

As protests begin to achieve a critical mass again (albeit much lower than last year) in Tahrir ("Tahrir Protests Continue," June 6, 2012, by Hossam El-Hamalawy, Jadaliyya), I have returned to a few books written after the first flush of enthusiasm about the Egyptian Spring (there is a movie Tahrir - Liberation Square, which looks interesting, but I have only seen the trailers). Three books focusing on events of 2011.  For an outsider, not simply trying to understand what happened/is happening in Egypt, but how to understand the modern world, I found Ashraf Khalil, Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation (St. Martin’s Press, 2012) to be most revelatory. Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0 (2012) is mainly the story of the politicization of one person (albeit a very interesting and thought-provoking story).  Marwan Bishara, The Invisible Arab (2012) wants to jump straight to the commentary without enough grounding in the narrative (Bishara might have the grounding, but he doesn't provide the reader with it). Khalil, as a Cairo-based reporter for European news services, is both in the revolution and reporting on it. Intriguing chapters on Tahrir days reveal how the street protests actually created community (communities) more once the government shut down phone/internet communication, forcing everyone to speak to everyone else to find out what was going on on the next block. More than Ghonim and Bishara, Khalil roots the revolution in the past decade of Egyptian history.  As such, it appeals most to the mere historian in me.  See also, now a new collection of essays on this context ("The Journey to Tahrir: Revolution, Protest, and Social Change in Egypt," reviewed by Arang Keshavarzian, in mobilizingideas, June 13, 2012), which I suppose is my next port of call to read.

Finally, a very detailed reconstruction of the life and death of Khaled Saeed has been written by Amro Ali in Jadaliyya ("Saeeds of Revolution: De-Mythologizing Khaled Saeed," June 5, 2012 by Amro Ali, Jadaliyya)