Noah Feldman is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the author of many books, including The Three Lives of James Madison, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (Princeton), and What We Owe Iraq (Princeton). A contributing writer for Bloomberg Opinion and the host of the podcast Deep Background, he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Twitter @NoahRFeldman
Noah Feldman has written an elegant and incisive book that illuminates one of the most important events of our time: the tragic failure of the Arab Spring. It was tragic because failure was avoidable. Tyranny returned in Egypt, horrendous slaughter followed the uprising in Syria, but Tunisia demonstrated what political prudence could achieve: the emergence of democracy in the Arab world. Feldman asks a question with haunting relevance well beyond the Middle East: can a people who have chosen a democratic path then choose to renounce it in favor of tyranny? - Michael Ignatieff, President, Central European University, Budapest