A magnificent reckoning with the extraordinary changes engulfing the Middle East, by one of our greatest reporters on the region

Robin Wright first landed in the Middle East on October 6, 1973, the day the fourth Middle East war erupted. She has covered every country and most major crises in the region since then, through to the rise of Al-Qaeda and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. For all the drama of the past, however, the region's most decisive traumas are unfolding today as the Middle East struggles to deal with trends that have already reshaped the rest of the world. And for all the darkness, there is also hope. Some of the emerging trends give cause for greater optimism about the future of the Middle East than at any time since the first Arab-Israeli War in 1948.

Dreams and Shadows is an extraordinary tour d'horizon of the new Middle East, with on-the-ground reportage of the ideas and movements driving change across the region-and the obstacles they confront. Through the powerful storytelling for which the author is famous, Dreams and Shadows ties together the players and events in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, Turkey, the Gulf states, and the Palestinian territories into a coherent vision of what lies ahead.

A marvelous field report from the center of the storm, the book is animated by the characters whose stories give the region's transformation its human immediacy and urgency. It is also rich with the history that brought us to this point. It is a masterpiece of the reporter's art and a work of profound and enduring insight.

"Despite having lost several of her friends in the 1983 US Embassy bombing in Beirut, Wright (The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran) is guardedly optimistic for the Middle East's future: 'a generation after the Beirut bombing, Islamic extremism is no longer the most important, interesting, or dynamic force in the Middle East.' Her observations, of a 'budding culture of change'-even, perhaps, a 'renaissance'-are bolstered by platinum credentials; for more than 30 years, Wright has been covering the region for major American publications including The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly and Foreign Affairs. She illuminates her assessment with stories of the new 'voices in the region' pushing for a more open, democratic society: activists, reformers, political leaders and ordinary citizens (like an Egyptian 'middle-aged soccer mom' so outraged to learn of female government agents beating female demonstrators that she became an activist). Wright also tackles the big targets; though a staunch supporter of Israel, Wright sees the potential for reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, in an effort to maintain democracy in Palestine, as a positive harbinger of change for the entire region. Further interviews, anecdotes, a crystalline sense of the area's multifarious history and a clear message-practical, progressive change requires 'sorting out the past or at least trying to move beyond it'-make this a vital, compelling and surprisingly uplifting piece of reporting." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Although he wasn't a pessimistic conservative himself, George Orwell used to say that 'plans for human betterment do normally come unstuck, and the pessimist has many more opportunities of saying 'I told you so' than the optimist.' Nowhere does Orwell's point apply so sharply as in what we call the Middle East, even if, as Robin Wright's absorbing new book shows, we really do need a less vague and... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) inaccurate expression for what is now the most frantic and dangerous region on Earth, stretching across western Asia between the Indus and the Mediterranean, or even North Africa to the Atlantic.

A diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post, Wright has been covering the region for three decades. In 'Dreams and Shadows,' she ranges from Iran to Morocco, which is to say over two continents and several thousand miles, amidst different peoples with mutually incomprehensible languages (even if most are versions of Arabic) and widely disparate religious practices (even within the broad range of Islam). Metternich contemptuously dismissed Italy as no more than a 'geographical expression,' but the Middle East isn't even that. All that unites this vast amorphous area is recurrent violence, economic stagnation and political failure.

Readers sometimes complain that newspapers print only bad news. Well, Wright is in fact an optimist, and she has done her best to give the good news. She describes the way many brave and decent people are struggling to free their countries from autocracy or worse, and she seeks out 'a budding culture of change.' In one country after another, men and women want to use economic empowerment and freedom of expression, enhanced by new technology, as the means to political liberation. But she is an honest reporter, and the story that emerges from this book is not quite the one she would like to tell. She cannot conceal the truth that change is slow to come when it comes at all.

In 1983 Wright was in Beirut when zealots blew up the U.S. Marine barracks and killed the largest number of American military personnel in one attack since Iwo Jima. She was in Iran to witness the revolution of 1979 and its accompanying bloodshed. And five years ago she covered the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Senator McCain now says that the surge is working, and others insist that America can still win. We'll see, but the brighter side of this whole story is not easy to perceive.

That phrase 'Middle East' is often shorthand for one physically small aspect of it, the bitter and intractable conflict between Jew and Arab in the Holy Land, and in her chapter on 'The Palestinians' (not a place like the 'Egypt' or 'Iran' of her other chapters) she comes up against the great paradox of American policy: Democracy was meant to be the solution, but it turns out to be a problem.

As some of us shyly suggested might prove to be the case, free elections have had outcomes highly unpalatable to Washington. Wright quotes the Hamas leader Osama Hamdan's sarcastic observation that the United States has been like the prince in search of a Cinderella who will fit the shoe, but 'if the people who are elected don't fit into the American shoe, then the Americans will reject them.'

Democracy is problematic in a different way in Egypt, where successive governments have shown little enthusiasm for free and fair elections. Polling stations and political meetings are terrorized by young brutes for whom ' 'thugs' is the widely accepted euphemism' (as Wright oddly puts it; not all that euphemistic, one would have thought). And country after country either has sham elections, like Morocco, or a regime of pure terror, like Syria.

On occasion Wright's story hiccups with non sequiturs. Her beloved Lebanon is a democracy, albeit flawed, which ranks highest of any Arab country on an international freedom index. But she writes that 'ironically, Lebanon is also strictly secular,' when she means that it is secular in theory but swamped by religious conflict in practice.

Other tics in the book are characteristic of American higher journalism, from splashes of borrowed profundity to 'get-color-in-your-copy.' Chapter epigraphs from 'French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre,' 'Russian playwright Anton Chekhov' and 'American artist Andy Warhol' are more portentous than illuminating. And when Eugene Ionesco says that 'dreams and anguish bring us together,' is it even true?

One person after another gets a thumbnail physical description, such as 'a slim woman with an easy demeanor' or 'a trim man with short white hair and a short white beard.' But would that lady's politics be any different if she were plumper, or the man's importance greater if his hair were still brown? This might be called the school of insignificant detail: 'Amin stopped to light another Marlboro.' The relevant word is 'insignificant' rather than 'detail.' When A.J.P. Taylor observed that Bismarck, almost uniquely among Prussians of his age and class, was a smoker, it told us something of the man's unconventional or even radical character. Do we really learn anything by knowing that Amin prefers Marlboros to Pall Malls?

All of these are distractions from what is otherwise a compelling narrative — and a sad story. Many of the people Wright meets are truly admirable, but her book only emphasizes that they are, almost by definition, politically impotent.

This is not just a question of gloom about the present moment. One of the better epigraphs, from the Palestinian political analyst Rami Khouri, tells us, 'We're coming out of a bad millennium in the Arab world.' It would be nice to think that the next millennium will be better, and Wright believes that violent jihadism is a passing phase. This may be true in the sense that nihilistic rage with no attainable object is quite obviously a dead end. Even so, bear in mind that this new 'revolt of Islam' was quite unforeseen 50 years ago. Those were the days when, as a Middle East hand of an older vintage than Wright's said to me dryly not long ago, 'We thought that the Baathists were the voice of progress.'

There is indeed a related conclusion to be drawn from this stimulating if depressing book: just how often the Middle East has confirmed that grimmest of all laws, the law of unintended consequences. Few Americans foresaw the Iranian revolution and its likely outcome, but then even the Iranians, or many of them, didn't initially take Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seriously, Wright says. Some saw him as a mere bumpkin when he banned billboard ads featuring Western celebrities like David Beckham and closed down theaters and converted them into religious centers. They know better now, and so do we.

Likewise, as for Lebanon, Yitzhak Rabin — Israeli defense minister at the time, once and future prime minister, and to date the only Israeli premier to have been assassinated — said that of all the surprises, good or more often bad, that came out of the Israeli invasion in 1982, 'the most dangerous is that the war let the Shiites out of the bottle. No one predicted it; I couldn't find it in any intelligence report.'

All too many people have been saying 'no one predicted it' about that other scheme of human betterment, the invasion of Iraq five years ago, and still mutter about what intelligence reports said beforehand. Actually, some of us did predict the current woes, or something like them, and can now say, 'I told you so,' though it gives no pleasure to say it. Robin Wright's book ought to teach our rulers a thing or two, but they often seem quite unteachable.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft's books include 'The Controversy of Zion' and 'Yo, Blair!' He is writing a book about Winston Churchill."

Reviewed by Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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"Few Middle East observers have a keener eye for the region than Wright, and she is a talented trend spotter. Two decades ago her Sacred Rage foreshadowed the appeal of militant Islam and the challenge it posed. With Dreams and Shadows she illuminates, in riveting fashion, the hopeful political personalities and developments in what many mistakenly see as the uninterrupted bleakness of the Middle East. Her insightsdrawn from vast experience, a remarkable array of Middle Eastern contacts, and an unblinking sense of realismare cause for cautious optimism."

Representative Tom Lantos, Chairman, House Committee on Foreign Affairs

"Dreams and Shadows offers a panoramic perspective on the prospects of change in the Middle East. Wright brings to life an array of forces, voices, and ideasboth inspiring and troublingin an engaging political travelogue. Readers will come away with a better understanding of the region's rich past, a sense of its current stirrings, and a view into what may lie ahead."

Former National Security Adviser Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft

"A compelling account of a turbulent region whose future is inescapably bound to our own. Anyone who wants to understand the seismic forces at work would be well advised to read Dreams and Shadows."

Senator Joseph Biden, Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

"Very rarely is our world so faithfully captured. The Middle East in recent decades has only become more complex. Wright's insights and analyses are critical for any sensible understanding of what is happening. Her greatest contribution is to grasp the deep currents of hope, humanity, and dignity that anchor the often turbulent societies of the region. This book is essential reading."

Rami G. Khouri, syndicated columnist, Beirut's Daily Star

"Written in the best style of a veteran traveler and expert, Dreams and Shadows tells the story of the world's most volatile area, going through its most profound changes after decades of stagnation. Wright's journey among reformers and reactionaries, clerics and democracy advocates is a necessary reference to anyone interested in understanding the Middle East's undercurrentsand it taught me quite a lot about our neighborhood."

Aluf Benn, diplomatic editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz

"Insightful and passionate. Wright is well aware of the dilemmas facing the Middle East. But she also reminds us that we need not resort to military force and violence or resign ourselves to compromise with extremism and tyranny. Since tyranny and extremism as well as democracy and freedom are not defined by geographical, national, religious, or ethnic boundaries, hope lies in the aspirations of those (our true allies) in the region who against all odds are fighting for pluralism, openness, and human rights."

Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

"Fascinating reading for anyone who likes true human drama. Only Wright could have written Dreams and Shadows because only Wright has traveled so widely, interviewed such diverse leaders, and brought so much wisdom to analyzing the region's many-sided puzzles. This volume, full of mesmerizing detail and large truths, sets a new standard for scholarship on the modern Middle East."
-Secretary Madeleine Albright

"Robin Wright brings her enormous knowledge of the Middle East, gained over years of reporting, to narrate how the region is undergoing enormous social change brought on by technology and globalization, and why, despite Iraq, democracy remains on the region's agenda."
— Francis Fukuyama, Johns Hopkins University Professor of International Political Economy and author of America at the Crossroads

"In Dreams and Shadows, Robin Wright offers a compelling account of the political contours that are defining the modern Middle East. Drawing upon her decades of travel and reporting from the region, Wright reveals the undercurrents of the latest fundamental searching in Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon, as well as the labyrinthine politics of Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Iran, and others. With her impressive access to the region's political and opinion leaders, Wright brings us to the ideological battle lines of the new Middle East, including promising openings and awakenings too often followed by disappointment and repression. She describes autocrats, democrats, and theocrats skirmishing in increasingly unpredictable ways."
— U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN), Republican Leader of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"Dreams and Shadows is a lucid and comprehensive look at tumultuous events that have shaped the Middle East and will continue to chart its future. Relying on thirty five years of reporting Robin Wright provides a rich tapestry of information and insight that is enjoyable to read and will also go a long way in providing understanding of the Middle East and the challenges that it presents U.S. foreign policy."
--Vali Nasr, author of The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future

"This is the best of all possible worlds: An old hand guides us through the changes in post-9/11 Middle East, and is able to sort out in a sober, smart way what is really going on."
-Thomas E. Ricks, author of FIASCO: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

"Dreams and Shadows" is an extraordinary tour de horizon of the new Middle East, with on-the-ground reportage of the ideas and movements driving change across the region--and the obstacles they confront.