Syria Burning
ISIS AND THE DEATH OF THE ARAB SPRING
With a foreword by PATRICK COCKBURN
“More than ever in the era of 24-hour sound-bite news, events demand the long view if they are to be explicable. With his deep experience of the Levant, that is exactly what Charlie Glass offers the student of the Middle East in this timely, elegant and penetrating study of turmoil that has reshaped the region." —Alan Cowell, former Middle East Bureau Chief, The New York Times
“Charles Glass has written a cautionary lament for the last gasp of what once was the Levant, his 'Syria,' chronicling not just the facts of that unhappy country’s current civil war but the mindless destruction of its great monuments. Read Syria Burning to understand why the Assad regime was uniquely prepared and determined to resist the winds of change, even if the war doubtless marks the end of a century of post-Ottoman history.” —Jonathan Randal, former Washington Post Middle East Correspondent and author of The Tragedy of Lebanon
“If news moves fast, assessments have not, which is one reason why we should all read Syria Burning …[But] there is another, better reason to read this book. Glass has been travelling in and writing about the Middle East since the 1980s when he was Middle East correspondent for ABC News. He made the headlines himself in 1987, when he was held hostage in Beirut for almost nine weeks. His view on how the conflict has escalated and why it has not taken the turns many others anticipated make for enlightening reading.” —The Observer (London)
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About the Book
Since its commencement in the upsurge of the Arab Spring in 2011, the Syrian civil war has claimed in excess of 200,000 lives, with an estimated 8 million Syrians, more than a third of the country’s population, forced to flee their homes. A stalemate now exists in the country with the government of Bashar al-Assad maintaining its grip on most of the cities in the west, while large swathes of the countryside in the north and east are under the control of the Islamic fundamentalist groups ISIS and the Nusra Front. The Caliphate announced by ISIS in the summer of 2014 occupies some 35% of the country, as well as vast territory across the border in Iraq.
The nuances of this conflict have never been well-understood in the West, least of all, it seems, by governments in the US and Europe, who, anticipating Assad’s sudden departure, made it a condition of any negotiated settlement. The consequences of that miscalculation, Charles Glass contends in this illuminating and concise survey, have contributed greatly to the unfolding disaster that we witness today.
Glass has reported extensively from the Middle East, and travelled frequently in Syria, over several decades. Here he melds together reportage, analysis and history to provide an accessible overview of the origins and permutations defining the conflict, situating it clearly in the overall crisis of the region. His voice, elegant and concise, humane and richly-informed, is a vital antidote to the sloganizing that shapes so much commentary, and policy, concerning the civil war.
Publication June 11, 2015 • 156 pages
Paperback ISBN 978-1-939293-88-6 • E-book 978-1-939293-89-3
About the Author
Photo © Sasha Gusov
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Charles Glass is an author, journalist and broadcaster, who specializes in the Middle East. He made headlines when taken hostage for 62 days in Lebanon by Shi’a militants in 1987, while writing a book during his time as ABC’s News chief Middle East correspondent. He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books, Harper’s, the London Review of Books and The Spectator. He is the author of Tribes with Flags, Money for Old Rope, The Tribes Triumphant, The Northern Front, Americans in Paris and Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II. |
In the Media
- “Does anyone have the Syrian’s well- being in mind?” CHARLES GLASS reviewed in History News Network (6/16/2016)
- Monterey Herald reviews SYRIA BURNING (4/4/2016)
- CHARLES GLASS and PATRICK COCKBURN join ABC to discuss the roots of the Syrian conflict (11/30/2015)
- “Peace, not war, will be the downfall of the Islamic State.” CHARLES GLASS in The Intercept (11/20/2015)
- Belen Fernandez reviews SYRIA BURNING in Warscapes (11/16/2015)
- CHARLES GLASS discusses the latest in Syria with Between the Lines (11/4/2015)
- “Russia and the US have played equivalent roles on opposite sides [of the Syrian conflict] without meeting to discuss ways that this is not going to be resolved by war.” CHARLES GLASS on Democracy Now! (10/26/2015)
- “Until the regional powers and superpowers agree that the war in Syria should end, it will not end” CHARLES GLASS speaks to Boston College (10/23/2015)
- Writing for The New York Review of Books, CHARLES GLASS assesses the situation in Syria and urges the international powers fueling the conflict to broker a peace (10/5/2015)
- In an excerpt of SYRIA BURNING published on Mondoweiss, CHARLES GLASS asks whether Syria’s revolution could have been different (9/11/2015)
- “Personal and intimate” Counterfire explains the importance of SYRIA BURNING (9/1/2015)
- “Wherever we are, we will understand [the Syrian conflict] better with a book like this behind us.” The Observer reviews SYRIA BURNING (8/10/2015)
- “There can only be a negotiated solution” CHARLES GLASS interviewed on The Takeaway with John Hockenberry (7/7/2015)
- SYRIA BURNING excerpted on Who What Why (7/1/2015)
- “SYRIA BURNING reveals a great deal more than the reports that track the minutiae of this battle and that battle” SYRIA BURNING reviewed in Frontline (6/24/2015)
- CHARLES GLASS discusses Syria with The Monocle (6/7/2015)
- In the Evening Standard, CHARLES GLASS explains why Obama’s Syria strategy is unrealistic (5/26/2015)
- CHARLES GLASS interviewed by Mark Colvin on Syria and the future of the Arab Spring (5/22/2015)
- CHARLES GLASS joins VICE to talk about how the Syrian conflict has affected everyday life (5/22/2015)
- CHARLES GLASS appears on Democracy Now! to weigh in on the latest developments in the Syrian conflict (5/21/2015)
- CHARLES GLASS joins RT to talk about the role of foreign powers in the Syria conflict (5/20/2015)
- “We have a war where neither side can win.” BBC Today interviews CHARLES GLASS about SYRIA BURNING (5/13/2015)
- CHARLES GLASS interviewed on BBC Newshour (5/12/2015)
