In describing the struggles of people from Morocco to Iran to reform or replace existing regimes Robin Wright draws on three decades of experience in covering the region for The Washington Post and other newspapers.Opening on an optimistic note, Wright describes how in 1983 she stood across the street from the ruins of the United States Embassy in Beirut after more than 60 Americans had been killed by a suicide bomber. At that time, she recalls, it seemed that Islamic fundamentalists had the initiative and were shaping the future of the region. “Yet a generation later,” she writes, “Islamic extremism is no longer the most important, interesting or dynamic force in the Middle East.”
It would be good if this were true, but in general the stories Wright relates of brave reformers battling for human and civil rights show them as having had depressingly small influence.
