Revolt

"A well-written and thought-provoking account of the current

crisis of globalization. Not everyone will agree with Eyal's interpretation,

but few will remain indifferent." —Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens    

An eye-opening examination of nationalism’s

spread around the world as the promise of globalism wanes

Revolt is an eloquent

and provocative challenge to the prevailing wisdom about the rise of nationalism

and populism. With a vibrant and informed voice, Nadav Eyal illustrates how modern

globalization is not sustainable. He contends that the collapse of the current

world order is not so much about the imbalance between technological

achievement and social progress or the breakdown of liberal democracy as it is

about a passion to upend and destroy power structures that have become hollow,

corrupt. or simply unresponsive to urgent needs. Eyal illuminates the benign

and malignant forces that have so rapidly transformed our economic, political,

and cultural realities, shedding light not only on the economic and cultural

revolution that has come to define our time but also on the counterrevolution

waged by those it has marginalized and exploited.

With a mixture of

journalistic narrative, penetrating vignettes, and original analysis, Revolt shows that the left and right have much in common. Eyal tells stories of

distressed Pennsylvania coal miners, anarchist communes on the outskirts of

Athens, a Japanese town with collapsing fertility rates, neo-Nazis in Germany,

and Syrian refugee families whom he accompanied from the shores of Greece to

their destination in Germany. Into these reports from the present Eyal weaves

lessons from the past, from the opium wars in China to colonialist Haiti to the

Marshall Plan. With these historical ties, he shows that the revolts’ roots have

always been deep and strong, and that rather than seeing current uprisings as part

of a passing phenomenon, we should recognize that revolt is the new status quo.