First Book Review Out
and the first event of our book tour!
A few quick notes for interested readers of this newsletter…
Our NEW BOOK has had its first review on a widely-read blog about Middle Eastern politics, run by Professor Marc Lynch. He has very nice things to say for us, including:
“This is an important, refreshing approach to the question of state autonomy, really well-written, genuinely comparative in a cross-regional and intra-regional way, and wonderfully written. I expect that it (and our book, please) will be gracing quite a few syllabi in comparative politics in the coming years — so get a hold of it now.”
You can find the whole thing (it is short) below:
If you are in DC, we are holding a book event later this month! It’ll be hosted at the Elliott School of International Affairs on Tuesday, September 24th from 12:00 to 1:30pm. Please come if you can! Nathan Brown and I will be there in person, and both Steven Schaaf and Samer Anabtawi will be there virtually. We’ll have a nice general chat on the book, how we went about writing it, and what our main argument(s) and takeaways are, all moderated by the excellent Professor Marlene Laruelle. Please see this site here to register.
And of course, you should really buy the book if you haven’t already. Link here and a newsletter post with extra details and links below (discount code “UMF24”):
Finally, I want to ask readers of this newsletter - if you are so inclined - to review our book on Amazon, post reviews on LinkedIn, Facebook, or X (Twitter), and blog about it, podcast about it, whatever. Academic presses don’t organize book tours themselves, so every bit of publicity we get is generated by ourselves or our reading public. And as the book is in free, open-access ebook form as well as an affordable paperback, there’s every reason to spread it as far as there is interest. Thanks ahead of time. :)
Further Business
More from me later - I’m poking away at a few different essays for this newsletter, but none are quite ready yet. Something on Iran is coming soon with any luck, and probably another on an ‘authoritarian reading list’ later on down the road.
And last of all, you should also read my latest piece in Foreign Affairs, “Putin the Resilient,” if you haven’t already.
- Julian