Steven Cook's medium length history of the political scene in Egypt provides a decent overview of what can seem like a political system rooted in despotism. For anyone who doesn't know or remember anything about Egypt pre-Hosni Mubarak, Cook write an interesting and informative guide to how the military launched Nasser to the presidency, and the colonial pressures that pushed the military - specifically a cabal of young offices - to take the action they did.
The Struggle of Egypt neatly explains the main reasons why Egypt has been happy to take American aid whilst simultaneously decrying American patronism of Israel, why many Egyptians are against the unilateral Egypt-Israel peace treaty known as the Camp David Accords (much more to do with anti- colonialism than anti-Semitism), and why the army is seen as the protector of the civilians rather than the police. Cook also discusses in passing why an American democracy agenda is unlikely to work in a country like Egypt - and therefore to a certain extent the rest of the Arab world - and why successive American presidents have supported Mubarak despite this.
The book is not always a seamless read; at occasional points it can read like an undergraduate essay and there are points when the text doesn't flow as well as it might. But overall these are minor points and are fully outweighed by the depth of the research and the author's obvious affinity with the country. If you are looking for a good primer that covers colonialism, Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak then this is the book for you.
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There is a newer edition of this item:
Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square (Council on Foreign Relations (Oxford))
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£14.99
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Only 1 left in stock (more on the way).
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