Description

From Fouad Ajami, an acclaimed writer and chronicler of Arab politics, comes a compelling account of what sort of generation of Arab intellectuals attempted to expose social renewals within their homelands through the forces of secularism and modernity. Fundamentally, they found encounter frustration, exile, and, occasionally, death. Brilliantly weaving together the strands of the tumultuous century in Arab political thought, background, and composition, Ajami takes us from the ruins of Beirut's once gleaming city towards the land of Egypt, where battle rages between a modernist impulse and an Islamist insurgency, from Nasser's pan-Arab nationalist goals towards the introduction of an anxious Pax Americana in Arab countries, from the triumphalism of the Gulf Conflict for the ongoing anguished debate within the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords.For anybody who attempts to comprehend the Center East, listed here is an expert's unflinching examination of the crash between intellectual life and political facts in the Arab world today.