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

An eccentric but provocative retelling of the modern history of the Arab world, this book mixes insider accounts with sometimes far-fetched speculation to weave an entertaining story. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ruled from 1952 to 1970, helped reshape the political landscape of the Middle East. Rowell finds his fingerprints on virtually all the consequential events of his era. Some tales are useful reminders of an unhappy history—see, for example, what Nasser himself called his “Vietnam,” the civil war in Yemen, in which tens of thousands of Egyptian troops fought during the 1960s—whereas others seem less reflections of Nasser’s policy influence than the long reach of his charisma, such as his apparent endorsement of Libya’s new ruler, the star-struck Muammar al-Qaddafi, shortly before Nasser died in 1970. Rowell has a predilection for stomach-turning descriptions of torture and cruelty in prisons across the region, not all of which can be attributed to Nasser, and for what Rowell admits are “educated guesses” about the Egyptian president’s role in the many coups of the day in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. Nonetheless, this is an engaging account of an important era in modern Middle Eastern history.