If We Burn

I loved this book because it gave me an inside account of many social movements from the stormy decade of 2010s that I had either lived through or followed from afar.

Based on interviews in 12 countries from Brazil to Bahrain to Ukraine, the book has a truly global reach and lets you understand a nagging question: Why did so little change in the world even as there were so many mass protests in the last decade? 

I especially enjoyed the fact that the book takes political ideas seriously while remaining readable and giving us a full-fleshed portrayal of its… show more.

Journalist Vincent Bevins’ most recent book, If We Burn, poses an urgent and provocative question: why is it that so many of the mass protests of the last decade led to the opposite of what the protesters were demanding?

Bevins provides fascinating insights about what sparked the uprisings that took place between 2010 and 2020 in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Turkey, Brazil, Ukraine, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Chile, and why these protests (mostly) failed to accomplish their goals. Good-faith arguments are hard to come by; readable books on global affairs, even more so.

Bevins has an impressive ability to… show more.