Hazem Kandil

The Rise and Fall of American Europe by Glyn Morgan finds a continent powerless before a capricious United States. Is it too late to teach an old world new tricks?

Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America’s Cold War Prophet by Edward Luce and Henry Kissinger: An Intimate Portrait of the Master of Realpolitik by Jérémie Gallon reveal the parallel lives of the Cold War frenemies.

Was it the mob? A coup? Cuban dissidents? War hawks? Over 60 years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the theories are still debated. Do any of them hold up?

For most Egyptians independence came with the revolution of July 1952, not with the end of the British protectorate in February 1922. Yet, as the experiences of three patriotic writers show, independence did not mean freedom.