A prominent historian provides an engaging on-the-ground account of the everyday authoritarianism that produced the Arab Spring in Egypt "A visceral and perceptive study of life under autocracy."--Publishers Weekly

An unmatched contemporary history of authoritarian politics and an unflinching examination of the politics of historical authority, My Egypt Archive (Yale UP, 2023) is at once a chronicle of Egypt in the 2000s and a historian's bildungsroman. As Alan Mikhail dutifully collected the paper scraps of the past, he witnessed how the everyday oppressions of a government institution led most Egyptians to want to remake their society in early 2011. In telling these stories of the archive, Mikhail centers the politics of access, interpersonal relationships, state power, and the emotion, anxiety, and inchoate nature of historical research. My Egypt Archive reveals the workings of an authoritarian regime from inside its institutions in the decade leading up to the Arab Spring and, in doing so, points the way to exciting new modes of historical inquiry that give voice to the visceral realities all historians experience.

Alan Mikhail, Chace Family Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Yale University, is widely recognized for his work in Middle Eastern and global history.

Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department. His research focuses on the intersection of the occult sciences and the environment across the western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners’ feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome.

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David Aldridge

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