Marc Lynch is the author of The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East (Public Affairs, 2016). Lynch is a professor of political science at George Washington University and blogs at the Monkey Cage.
From Tunisia to Egypt to Syria, the Arab Spring saw protesters storm to the street demanding reform and revolution. Five years later, most of t ... Show More
Yesterday
Fyodor Tertititsky, "Pyongyang on the Brink: Sixteen Crises That Shaped North Korea" (Hurst, 2026)
North Korea has survived wars, sanctions, and isolation—to the point where it now seems that the continuation of the Kim dynasty, and a starkly divided Korea, is assured. But history is filled with events where some change might have drastically altered how a country’s developmen ... Show More
34m 54s
May 12
Chiara Libiseller, "Reconceptualizing War: The Rise and Fall of Fashionable Concepts in Strategic Studies" (Oxford UP, 2026)
The field of Strategic Studies, which studies the use and threat of force for political purposes, has seen the repeated rise of concepts to dominate discourses and research agendas, only to eventually fall to the margins again. What explains this cyclical pattern? What are the co ... Show More
51m 38s
Nov 2023
Yemen: The Arab Spring Revolution
2011 was a pivotal year for Yemen, and indeed the entire Middle East. After years of wars against the insurgent Houthis in the North, and with years of protests against President Ali Abdullah Selah’s attempts at radical constitutional changes, the Arab Spring which engulfed so ma ... Show More
1h 12m
Aug 2017
Betty S. Anderson, “A History of the Middle East: Rulers, Rebels, and Rogues (Stanford UP, 2016)
As the Middle East continues to become more topical to American and European audiences, a need for textbooks to teach the history of the region has become urgent. Some such textbooks take a topical approach, others use a chronological narrative. Betty Anderson‘s A History of the ... Show More
27m 11s
Aug 2021
Mark Farha, "Lebanon: The Rise and Fall of a Secular State under Siege" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Why has secularism faced such challenges in the Middle East and in Lebanon in particular? In light of dominating headlines about the spread of sectarianism and the so-called death of Arab secularism, Mark Farha addresses the need for a thorough examination of the history of secul ... Show More
54m 51s
Feb 2013
The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World
Speakers: Fawaz Gerges, LSE; Charles Tripp, SOAS
Chair: Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, LSE
What drives large-scale, popular mobilizations in the Middle East and North Africa? And what are the challenges and prospects for democratic transformation and consolidation in the region? This ... Show More
1h 32m
Oct 2023
How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs w/ Elizabeth Thompson [Remastered]
<p>In this remastered episode of Guerrilla History (originally released in January, 2021), we were joined by Professor Elizabeth F. Thompson to talk about her book How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs, about the historic Syrian-Arab Congress of 1920. </p> <p>Elizabeth Thom ... Show More
1h 58m