Mixing thrilling anecdotes from street-level reporting that give readers a sense of what is at stake with a bird's-eye view of the geopolitics of the region and the globe, Vijay Prashad guides us through the dramatic changes in players, politics, and economics in the Middle East over the last five years. "The Arab Spring was defeated neither in the byways of Tahrir Square nor in the souk of Aleppo, " he explains. "It was defeated roundly in the palaces of Riyadh and Ankara as well as in Washington, DC and Paris.