DT266.7.W47

"Exhilarating encounters with those who sparked a revolution"--Cover.

- Part One: Tunisia 1- A revoloution of wit 2- Small town, big shots 3- The great expectations Gap 4- A Tale of two checkpoints 5- The Repression industry 6- "The Language of lies and talking down' 7- You didn't get us - Part Two: Egypt: 8- We are all Khaled Said 9- Midhat al- Yazel street 10- Of Mosque and Church 11- The Muslim brothers are just so twentieth - Century 12- Counter- revolution! 13- Read all about it 14- This revolution will be televised - Part Three: Libya 15- Looking for mercenaries 16- Looking for the Green book in Libya 17- Of Oil, Revolution and complicity 18- Iyes, It's Facebook! 19- Untold treasure 20- Back Home, Egyptian style

Johnny West has lived in this area for the past decade and speaks fluent Arabic, and so has the skills and ability to talk to everyone from security guards to revolutionaries, from families of protestors, some of whom have been killed, to oil workers, to cafe owners, lawyers, barbers and clerics. Travelling on public buses, visiting with families, hanging out in shops and cafes, he brings out for all of us what made ordinary people erupt, what happened to them during those days and now, what their hopes, fears and dreams are, how they see us in the West, how each country is different but how they see themselves as part of a joint Arab culture, before Islamists. Johnny West's long experience in the area enables him to set all this in context, while never losing the vividness of a travel book or the characters of a novel. This is not a political treatise but a journey of discovery - of people, of places, of life under extraordinary circumstances - which this book allows us to share and makes one feels as if one had been there.