On June 8, 2010 an Egyptian Google executive based in Dubai, named Wael Ghonim, was stunned by a YouTube video that featured a fellow citizen by the name of Khaled Said, bloodied and disfigured. It turned out that the Egyptian police had beaten Said to death and mutilated his body. Appalled by this short video that ran viral through Arab social media, Wael Ghonim created a Facebook page that came to symbolize the involvement of ordinary people in creating change.
Ancestral Leaves: A Family Journey through Chinese History by Joseph W. Esherick (2011)
This book reconstructs the history of the Ye family beginning in the fifteenth century, when its first ancestor was recorded, all the way to the present. The focus of the book is on Ye Kunhou and his son in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and on the Ye brothers (Kunhou’s great great grandsons), who experienced the turbulence of war and revolution under the Republic, and took different paths after the Communist Revolution in 1949.
Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins (1975)
Freedom at Midnight paints a sweeping picture of the tumultuous year of India’s independence from Great Britain in 1947. The narrative style of the book immerses readers in the visual landscape of the falling Raj and allows them to step into the minds of the great actors of this time.
The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan by Ayesha Jalal (1985)
Reflecting on the origins of Pakistan nearly forty years after the 1947 partition of India, Ayesha Jalal weaves a convincing revisionist narrative of the nation’s birth.
Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (Volume I: 1889-1947) by Sarvepalli Gopal (1976)
After serving in Jawaharlal Nehru’s government for ten years, Sarvepalli Gopal opens his biography of India’s first prime minister with a pledge to maintain objectivity. Gopal appears to overcome his biases, tracking Nehru from his privileged upbringing in Allahbad to his assumption of power in New Delhi in 1947.
Wavell: the Viceroy’s Journal by Archibald Percival Wavell, ed. Penderel Moon (1973)
Archibald Percival Wavell served as the penultimate viceroy of India from 1943 to 1947, meticulously chronicling his experience through the twilight of the British Raj.
The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor (2009)
For many historians of China and even for many Chinese, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of China’s Nationalist Party and then founder of the Republic of China in Taiwan, was a classic “bad guy” of history.
Iran’s Nuclear Program and the History of the IAEA
As the international community scrambles to stop a nuclear-armed Iran from adding more fuel to the powder keg of Middle Eastern geopolitics, it is vital that contrasting understandings of the international nuclear nonproliferation regime among nations, particularly the purpose of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty administered by the IAEA, be acknowledged and resolved.
Undergraduate Essay Contest Honorable Mention: Beirut City Center Recovery: The Foch-Allenby and Etoile Conservation Area by Robert Saliba (2004)
The city of Beirut witnessed a legendary amount of violence during the fifteen year long Lebanese Civil War. News programs the world over broadcast it into the homes of millions of people from 1975 till the Lebanese Parliament ratified the Taif accord in late 1989.
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (1924)
Set during the nascent years of the Indian nationalist movement in the fictitious North Indian town of Chandrapore, E.M. Foster’s novel, A Passage to India, follows Adela Quested, a young English woman visiting India for the first time.