Here are 100 books that Libya's Fragmentation fans have personally recommended if you like
Libya's Fragmentation.
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I first visited and worked in Libya in 1977. At the time, only a handful of books on Libya were available in English, and all of them were technical studies related to the petroleum industry. In an effort to better understand the political economy of this beautiful and intriguing state, I began to conduct my own field research. This research led to the publication in 1981 of two articles on Libya under the pseudonym of our two sons because it was dangerous for anyone to publish critical analysis of the Qaddafi regime. I remain fascinated with Libya, and over time, I have published five books and well over 100 articles and reviews on Libya.
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.
The entire story of Qaddafi's corrupt and repressive regime, the details of its downfall, and what Libya's future may hold in store
For a reader unfamiliar with the history of Libya, Muammar Qaddafi might be mistaken for a character in fiction. His eccentric leadership as the nation's "Brother Leader," his repressive regime, sponsorship of terrorist violence, unique vision of the state, and relentless hold on power all seem implausibly extreme. This riveting book documents the extraordinary reality of Qaddafi's rise and 42-year reign. It also explores the tenacious popular uprising that finally defeated him and the possibilities for Libya as…
I first visited and worked in Libya in 1977. At the time, only a handful of books on Libya were available in English, and all of them were technical studies related to the petroleum industry. In an effort to better understand the political economy of this beautiful and intriguing state, I began to conduct my own field research. This research led to the publication in 1981 of two articles on Libya under the pseudonym of our two sons because it was dangerous for anyone to publish critical analysis of the Qaddafi regime. I remain fascinated with Libya, and over time, I have published five books and well over 100 articles and reviews on Libya.
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.
InThe 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.
The death of Colonel Muammar Qadhafi freed Libya from forty-two years of despotic rule, raising hopes for a new era. But in the aftermath, the country descended into bitter rivalries and civil war, paving the way for the Islamic State and a catastrophic migrant crisis. In a fast-paced narrative that blends frontline reporting, analysis, and history, Frederic Wehrey tells the story of what went wrong. An Arabic-speaking Middle East scholar, Wehrey interviewed the key actors in Libya and paints vivid portraits of lives upended by a country in turmoil: the once-hopeful activists murdered or exiled, revolutionaries transformed into militia bosses…
I first visited and worked in Libya in 1977. At the time, only a handful of books on Libya were available in English, and all of them were technical studies related to the petroleum industry. In an effort to better understand the political economy of this beautiful and intriguing state, I began to conduct my own field research. This research led to the publication in 1981 of two articles on Libya under the pseudonym of our two sons because it was dangerous for anyone to publish critical analysis of the Qaddafi regime. I remain fascinated with Libya, and over time, I have published five books and well over 100 articles and reviews on Libya.
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…
On September 11, 2012, Al Qaeda proxies attacked and set fire to the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing a US Ambassador and three other Americans. The attack launched one of the longest and most consequential 'scandals' in US history, only to disappear from public view once its political value was spent.
Written in a highly engaging narrative style by one of a few Western experts on Libya, and decidely non-partisan, Benghazi!: A New History is the first to provide the full context for an event that divided, incited, and baffled most of America for more than three years, while silently reshaping…
I first visited and worked in Libya in 1977. At the time, only a handful of books on Libya were available in English, and all of them were technical studies related to the petroleum industry. In an effort to better understand the political economy of this beautiful and intriguing state, I began to conduct my own field research. This research led to the publication in 1981 of two articles on Libya under the pseudonym of our two sons because it was dangerous for anyone to publish critical analysis of the Qaddafi regime. I remain fascinated with Libya, and over time, I have published five books and well over 100 articles and reviews on Libya.
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.
Why has Libya fallen apart since 2011? The world has largely given up trying to understand how the revolution that toppled Muammar Gaddafi has left the country a failed state and a major security headache for Europe. Gaddafi's police state has been replaced by yet another dictatorship, amidst a complex conflict of myriad armed groups, Islamists, tribes, towns and secularists. What happened? One of few foreign journalists to have lived in post-revolution Tripoli, Ulf Laessing has unique insight into the violent nature of post-Gaddafi politics. Confronting threats from media-hostile militias and jihadi kidnappings, in a world where diplomats retreat to…
My friend Lou Cannon, the great reporter and Reagan biographer, once told me, “if you want to really learn about a subject, write a book about it.” As a political journalist and author of several books about current and past politics, wanted to learn more about the Founding Fathers, and as a map buff I tried to understand how they understood a continent most of which was not accurately mapped and how they envisioned the geographic limits and reach of a new republic more extensive in size than most nations in Europe. The book is my attempt to share what I learned with readers, and to invite them to read more about these extraordinary leaders.
This is an extended and intensive history of twelve years in the birth and growth of the Republic established under the Constitution, a period of intense political strive in which the leaders who endorsed the Constitution feared, for plausible reasons, that their new republic might be torn apart.
I have found that American historians, for all their distance from their subjects and marvelous expertise, tend to take partisan sides, and Elkins and McKittrick clearly lean to the Federalists (as did I while reading their account).
When Thomas Jefferson took the oath of office for the presidency in 1801, America had just passed through twelve critical years, years dominated by some of the towering figures of our history and by the challenge of having to do everything for the first time. Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Adams, and Jefferson himself each had a share in shaping that remarkable era--an era that is brilliantly captured in The Age of Federalism. Written by esteemed historians Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism gives us a reflective, deeply informed analytical survey of this extraordinary period. Ranging over the widest…
The American-born son of Jewish refugees, I would have every reason to revile the erstwhile capital of The Third Reich. But ever since my first visit, as a Fulbright Fellow in 1973, Berlin, a city painfully honest about its past, captured my imagination. A bilingual, English-German author of fiction, nonfiction, plays, poetry, travel memoir, and translations from the German, Ghost Dance in Berlin charts my take as a Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in a villa on Wannsee, Berlin’s biggest lake, an experience marked by memorable encounters with derelicts, lawyers, a taxi driver, a hooker, et al, and with cameo appearances by Henry Kissinger and the ghost of Marlene Dietrich.
Charting the interactions of various low-life characters in a stream-of-consciousness collage, tracing the city’s restless pace, Berlin Alexanderplatz, a novel by Alfred Döblin, published in 1929, mines the underbelly of the seething metropolis bursting at the seams. Considered by many to be one of the modern masterpieces of 20th-century literature, the novel follows the peregrinations of Franz Biberkopf, a pimp just out of prison, and his interactions with his erstwhile love interests and various shady associates. Döblin presents his protagonist as a kind of Everyman. I swear I encountered Biberkopf’s reincarnation in a homeless derelict crooning the German version of Sinatra’s “I Did it My Way” at an outdoor karaoke arena.
The great novel of 1920s Berlin life, in a new translation by Michael Hofmann, translator of Alone in Berlin
Franz Biberkopf is back on the streets of Berlin. Determined to go straight after a stint in prison, he finds himself thwarted by an unpredictable external agency that looks an awful lot like fate. Cheated, humiliated, thrown from a moving car; embroiled in an underworld of pimps, thugs, drunks and prostitutes, Franz picks himself up over and over again - until one day he is struck a monstrous blow which might just prove his final downfall.
I grew up in Massachusetts, which produced four presidents and untold presidential candidates including Mitt Romney, Mike Dukakis, John Kerry, Elizabeth Warren, and Gov. William Butler, who ran in 1884. My first career was as a newspaper reporter and editor, and I worked for papers in Massachusetts, New York, Colorado, and Washington state. I’ve dabbled in politics myself, working as a campaign press secretary for the late Washington Gov. Booth Gardner. Newspapers gave me an abiding hatred for adverbs, the passive voice, and bias in word selection. (No, historians shouldn’t use “patriot” in describing the Revolution’s American rebels, because loyalists and Indian nations were just as patriotic in their own minds.)
Imagine you’re Vice President Lyndon Johnson on Nov. 22, 1963. The Secret Service just hustled you into a secure room at the Dallas hospital where doctors are desperately trying to keep President John F. Kennedy alive after an assassination attempt. What’s going through your mind? If Kennedy dies, what are your next steps? Robert Caro found out. Pulitzer-winner Caro is the greatest historian of our lifetime—and a brilliant, accessible writer who makes it impossible to put down a 700-page nonfiction book. The Passage of Power is the fourth of a planned five-volume biography of Johnson, the man who helped turn Martin Luther King’s dream into reality, and then self-imploded with the Vietnam War. Caro’s final volume will be an instant best-seller.
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE, THE AMERICAN HISTORY BOOK PRIZE
Book Four of Robert A. Caro’s monumental The Years of Lyndon Johnson displays all the narrative energy and illuminating insight that led the Times of London to acclaim it as “one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age. A masterpiece.”
The Passage of Power follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career—1958 to1964. It is a time that would see him trade the extraordinary power…
I’m an economist, now in my fiftieth year as a professor at Harvard. While much of my work has focused on economic policy – questions like the effects of government budget deficits, guidelines for the conduct of U.S. monetary policy, and what actions to take in response to a banking or more general financial crisis – in recent years I’ve also addressed broader issues surrounding the connections between economics and society. Several years ago, in The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, I examined the implications of our economy’s growth, or stagnation, for the social, political, and ultimately moral character of our society. My most recent book explores the connections between economic thinking and religious thinking.
A classic book by one of our country’s most eminent historians, The Age of Reform traces the interplay between American politics and the clashing forces within American society from the time of Jefferson to the time of Franklin Roosevelt. In between, the great social movements – pro-and anti-slavery, populism, progressivism, the New Deal – all play out on a vast canvas. Religion is not the centerpiece of Hofstadter’s narrative, but it’s there throughout, sometimes on stage and at other times in the background. I’ve been recommending this book to my students for years.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author and preeminent historian comes a landmark in American political thought that examines the passion for progress and reform during 1890 to 1940.
The Age of Reform searches out the moral and emotional motives of the reformers the myths and dreams in which they believed, and the realities with which they had to compromise.
I grew up in Mexico listening to my father´s stories about the Mexican revolution. His storytelling abilities drew me in as he described his childhood memories and those of his father, who lived through the revolution. That's why I became a historian writing about the Mexican Revolution with a preference for biographies. As the Latin Americanist historian at St. John's University in New York City, I've written two books: Maximino Avila Camacho and the One Party State, Pancho Villa: A Biography, and edited A Brief History of Mexico by Lynn V. Foster. I hope you enjoy the list of books on significant personalities that shaped the first major social revolution of the twentieth century.
I was always fascinated by the story of Alvaro Obregon—this apparently unassuming general of the revolution slowly but surely knocking out one by one anyone getting on his way to become Mexico´s strongman. Not a minor feat considering that these include powerful and charismatic titans such as Pancho Villa and Venustiano Carranza. An ingenious strategist general and an uncanny political operator, Obregon is the man who finally brings peace and stability to Mexico after a long decade of unimaginable violence. Linda Hall beautifully threads the history of the revolution with the slow but effective rise of Obregon from a modest farmer to the presidency of Mexico.
The Mexican Revolution produced some romantic and heroic figures. In Mexico at the time, however, one man loomed large as the embodiment of revolutionary goals and the one leader able to take the country from strife into peace. That man was Alvaro Obregón.
Less well-known to North Americans than his contemporaries and sometime allies Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, Obregón eventually formed the first stable government of post-revolutionary Mexico. Stories of his daring and near-invincibility abounded as he led revolutionary forces against the usurper Huerta, then against the "bandit" elements within the Revolution itself. Throughout the period of fighting, however,…
I have loved history since I was a child, and very early on, I realized that history was not something that was made only by famous people. My own relatives had migrated, worked at different jobs, served in wars, etc., and ordinary people like them have been the most important drivers of events. I had a chance to study in Mexico in my early twenties and rapidly fell in love with its people and history. Yet, ever since I was a child, I have been interested in the history of wars. My work on the Mexican-American War combines all of these passions.
I have long been fascinated by the epic failure of France’s effort to be a power player in the New World, and I have never been terribly satisfied by books that leave out the Mexican side of that story.
I love that Jonas did great research in Europe and Mexico. He also knows how to tell a great story as a story. This book is full of tragedy, but many of the shady characters involved in this doomed effort give it a significant comic touch.
The story of how nineteenth-century European rulers conspired with Mexican conservatives in an outlandish plan to contain the rising US colossus by establishing Old World empire on its doorstep.
The outbreak of the US Civil War provided an unexpected opportunity for political conservatives across continents. On one side were European monarchs. Mere decades after its founding, the United States had become a threat to European hegemony; instability in the United States could be exploited to lay a rival low. Meanwhile, Mexican antidemocrats needed a powerful backer to fend off the republicanism of Benito Juarez. When these two groups found each…
