The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square (Council on Foreign Relations (Oxford))

This is a basic political history from pre-independence to the muslim brotherhood, it focuses on the machinations of the executives. The upside is that this book provides info on an understudied region of history, which is useful to a history student like me. The downside is that it is still a broad subject and many events are only covered in summary. It glosses over the Attrition War, the Golan Front of the Yom Kippur War, terrorism and the retaliation raids. It would have been better if Mr Cook had focused around a particular administration as then he could be more discriptive over how the 'coersive apperatus' works.

I ordered this book to help prepare for a series of talks I was asked to give on Egypt. I've lived there off-and-on over the past twenty years, but I was unsure what to say about current developments there. I found the book to be an excellent historical review of what has happened to make Egypt the place it is today. The predictions for the future were less focused, but who really knows or can say where Egypt is going? This book, while it could be more ambitious in dealing with where Egypt is going, is very good, indeed, on where it has been. Well worth the read.

Well informed and highly readable history and analysis of Egypt's recent history. The author created an engaging narrative of the historical events and the repressive regimes leading to its first true revolution. The book is also highly notable for exposing and elucidating the US regional policies and trilateral Egypt/US/Israel relationship that fuel the negative Arab sentiment towards the US.

I read this book for course and thought it was excellant. The last half was more interesting than the first half and went much faster. It was helpful in understanding the relationship between Egypt and US and the role Isreal plays in the dynamic.

This book gave me a much better understanding of Egypt and our relationship with that country. Some Egyptians are very much opposed to our policies there.

Superb recent history of Egypt. Provides important insights to understanding current turmoil gripping Egypt. Highly recommend for anyone interested in comprehensive view of this important Arab state, as well as understanding current events in the Middle East.

The Struggle for Egypt from Nasser to Tahrir Square clearly explains the role and promise of Nasser's 1952 Revolution. It traces the developments and failures of the Egyptian political struggle

Good

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.

Good!