We Are Your Soldiers, Alex Rowell
We Are Your Soldiers, Alex Rowell
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

We Are Your Soldiers
How Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World

Author: Alex Rowell

Narrator: Nigel Patterson

Unabridged: 13 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/14/2023


Synopsis

Gamal Abdel Nasser, the larger-than-life Egyptian president who ruled for eighteen years between the coup d'état he led in 1952 and his death in 1970, is best known for wresting the Suez Canal from the British and French empires and befriending such iconic revolutionaries as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Yet there is a darker side to Nasser's regime. He was a brutal authoritarian, whose legacy, Alex Rowell argues, lies at the heart of the violent and repressive order that still prevails throughout the Arab world today.

We Are Your Soldiers examines seven countries—Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, and Libya—weaving the epic tale of Nasser's dramatic encounters with each to reassess his impact in the Arab sphere. These engagements were often drenched in blood and destruction, leaving deep scars that endure to the present. Rowell shows how the Nasser years were crucial to the formation of regimes as varied as Bashar al-Assad's Syria, Muammar al-Gaddafi's Libya, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi's Egypt.

Drawing on a deep reading of Arabic sources, extensive interviews, and material never before published in English, Rowell offers a necessary reexamination of Nasser's rule and a new understanding of the politics of the Middle East.

About Alex Rowell

Alex Rowell, a lifelong resident of the Middle East, is a journalist and author in Lebanon. He has written for the BBC, the Economist, and the Washington Post, and is an editor at the Washington DC-based magazine New Lines.


Reviews

Goodreads review by None on June 10, 2024

An enthralling exploration into the ascent and impact of Nasser and the poisonous ideology of Nasserism. From direct engagement in the tumultuous civil conflicts of Yemen and Lebanon to orchestrating the targeted elimination of numerous intellectuals, activists, rivals, business magnates, journalist......more

Goodreads review by Martyn on July 07, 2024

The Middle East has suffered immensely from the rule of authoritarian dictators. Their presence is such a longstanding matter of course that we hardly ask how they became so dominant in this region. These dictators include Saddam Hussein, dislodged from power by the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Liby......more

Goodreads review by Ahmed on February 28, 2025

Chilling, if a little dismissive of western intervention in Iraq and Libya in the final chapters, and puzzling to end on the Libyan chapter.......more

Goodreads review by Jax on November 13, 2023

Gamal Abdel Nasser burst onto the international stage in 1952 when he led the coup d'état that overthrew King Farouk, introducing revolutionary politics that culminated in the seizure of the Suez Canal and the ouster of British troops from Egyptian soil. Charismatic and larger than life, he was wild......more

Goodreads review by Mark on November 14, 2023

My personal awareness of the politics of the Middle East started with the Yom Kippur War in 1973 (I was 11 years old), so I found this account of Nasser's influence on numerous countries (Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon and Libya) a fascinating primer on the Arab world of the 50s and 60s.......more