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
Today
Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023)
Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stori ... Show More
59m 34s
Nov 22
John Bodnar, "Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11" (UNC Press, 2021)
September 11th, 2001 marked the beginning of the so-called war on terror, but the attacks of that day also re-ignited battles over the nature of American patriotism. In Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11 (UNC Press, 2021), Professor John Bodnar argues that the natu ... Show More
1h 8m
Nov 19
Tim Seiter, "Wrangling Pelicans: Military Life in Texas Presidios" (U Texas Press, 2025)
A richly detailed history of daily life for colonial Spanish soldiers surviving on the eighteenth-century Texas Gulf Coast.
In 1775, Spanish King Carlos III ordered the capture of American pelicans for his wildlife park in Madrid. The command went to the only Spanish fort on the ... Show More
39m 50s
Dec 2020
Dreams of a Revolution: The Arab Spring, Ten Years On (Part 1: Tunisia and Libya)
Tune in for a special episode of The New Arab Voice, which revisits the widespread pro-democracy movement that drastically changed the face of the Middle East and North Africa. 10 years ago today, Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire out of pure desperation, ... Show More
31m 59s
Dec 2020
Dreams of a Revolution: The Arab Spring, Ten Years On (Part 2: Egypt, Yemen, Syria)
Tune in for a special episode of The New Arab Voice, which revisits the widespread pro-democracy movement that drastically changed the face of the Middle East and North Africa. 10 years ago today, Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire out of pure desperation, ... Show More
57m 31s
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
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
Mar 2021
The price of freedom: Syrians fight displacement and poverty after a decade of war
10 years ago this month, protesters took to the streetss broke out across Syria the country demanding an end to the rule of Bashar Al-Assad. Inspired by similar protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and across the region, Syrians sought a democratic and just society, free from oppr ... Show More
38m 45s