Books like Libya's Fragmentation

Alison Pargeter is a leading member of the new generation of Western scholars focused on North Africa and the Middle East in general and Libya in particular.

An Arabist, she draws on original research and field interviews to offer fresh perspectives and nuanced views not found elsewhere. Libya: The Rise and Fall of Qaddafi is an account of the Qaddafi regime from its creation in September 1969 until the death of Qaddafi in October 2011.

Throughout the book, Pargeter disentangles involved, complicated issues and events and explores them in lucid, engaging, and approachable prose.

She concludes her excellent book with a few thoughts on the legacy of the Qaddafi regime, remarks some reviewers found unduly pessimistic.

Unfortunately, the concerns she expressed in her concluding chapter have been largely borne out in the post-Qaddafi era.

Beginning with service as a military officer at the US embassy in Tripoli in 2009, Frederic Wehrey has had a long association with Libya.

This has enabled him to develop an unparalleled range of contacts inside and outside the country.

With a solid grounding in Libyan history, his analysis of socio-economic and political events has an authoritative freshness that few can equal.

In The Burning Shores, which focuses on Libya after the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime, he explores the missteps and turning points that led to the splintering of Libya, an outcome he rightly believes was not preordained.

This is an exceptional book; it is authoritative, informative, accessible, and will stand the test of time. 

In September 2012, radical Islamist terrorists attacked the US Diplomatic Mission and the CIA Annex in Benghazi, Libya, killing Ambassador J. Christopher (Chris) Stevens and three other Americans.

Ethan Chorin, who has 17 years of experience in Libya, wisely begins his narrative of the attacks with an exploration of their antecedents in a wide-ranging discussion of political Islam in Qaddafi’s Libya.

He then recounts events on the day of the attack from a privileged viewpoint as he was both in Benghazi and in contact with Ambassador Stevens on that day.

Next, he discusses the multiple investigations and hearings post-Benghazi in which the Republican opposition sought political advantage, turning an uncertain and often unclear response by the Obama administration into a biting, prolonged critique that stretched over the next four years.

Ethan Chorin is a master storyteller who skillfully weaves anecdotes and personal experiences into a narrative that is likely to… show more.

In Understanding Libya Since Gaddafi, Ulf Laessing sets out to explain why a country with an embarrassment of riches descended from a highly popular revolution into a failed state.

He focuses on the militias that sprang up to overturn the Qaddafi regime but then pursued separate agendas after the fighting ended.

In the process, the parameters of politics became less about democracy and the future direction of the country and more about control of the nation’s resources. Laessing’s focus on the militias makes two very important points that many authors fail to note.

First, the post-Qaddafi conflict is mostly about money, not ideology, and second, it has proved difficult to end the conflict because too many Libyans benefit from the status quo.

There was no one closer to Richard Nixon as Watergate unfolded than his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman. Every evening, Haldeman dictated an audio diary that is an essential source for understanding the Nixon presidency and the chain of events that led to its unraveling. While Haldeman admired Nixon, he was also well aware of his faults. He records the triumphs, failures, and personal quirks of his boss on an almost minute-to-minute basis. I think that Haldeman has it right when he concludes that Nixon did not know about Watergate in advance, in the sense that he did not order the break-in, but certainly caused it, in the sense that he created the culture that spawned all the abuses. Ultimately, these abuses led to Haldeman's own resignation and eighteen months in prison for Watergate-related offenses.

Mass formation psychosis causes people to lose contact with reality. Case-in-point: the apotheosis of Abraham Lincoln. The author presents a cogent case against the 16th president’s policies of “internal improvements,” high tariffs, and a national central bank (the failed and rejected Hamiltonian policies of the Whig party and Henry Clay). Lincoln insisted upon instituting mercantilism—a strong central government that dispenses special privileges to wealthy and influential corporations, who then support the central government, contravening the Constitution. In a reality stranger than fiction, he killed an estimated 620,000-750,000 Americans in a war upon the Southern states and their right to secede against tariff tyranny; disabled the sovereignty of the states; and did away with habeas corpus by arresting any who objected to his policies, setting precedents that have gutted an intimidated America ever since.

When respected journalist Ulrike Meinhof abandoned her middle-class, job-holding lifestyle to join a group of revolutionaries she’d been covering as a reporter, she was talked about as if she’d been kidnapped. But her own writing reveals a far more devastating reckoning with notions of social class, privilege, and the urgent need for cultural change. 

This is arguably the best history of Hong Kong I have read. It is strongest in covering the colonial period, and I constantly find myself going back to it for reference.

The author carefully charts how a colony that the British never wanted in the first place evolved into a great financial and commercial center and played a pivotal role in the development of China as a whole.

What happens when you take the meritocracy to extremes and you can only access the best of food and housing etc when your Q is the highest? Dalcher creates an interesting future world, damning of social engineering and genetic manipulation, and reminds us that it was less than a hundred years ago that certain war-hungry fellas (and a few women) salivated over thoughts of a perfect Aryan race. A great page-turner but with a few ‘Deus ex Machina' plot twists with which I’m still struggling. Nevertheless a very worthy read.

This is a fantastic book about a specific moment in Nepal’s history: the collapse of the 250-year-old Shah monarchy in 2008.

Mocko focuses on the three major Hindu festivals that regularly reinforced the monarchy: showing the vest of the Red God in May; receiving the blessing offered by the living goddess, Kumari, in September; and visiting the royal goddess, Taleju, in October. The removal of the king from prominent positions in all of these rituals has in no way impinged upon the celebrations of these festivals that have become even more popular in the intervening years.