For the past forty years the images flashing across our television screens from the Middle East have provoked anger, outrage and, sometimes, military action from the international community. But the stories behind them were rarely understood. In 2011 the revolutions of the Arab Spring changed everything. Now, the handful of dictators who ruled brutally over hundreds of millions of people - Hosni Mubarak, Ben Ali, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and...

"The 'Arab Spring' all started when a young Tunisian fruit-seller set himself on fire in protest of a government official confiscating his apples without cause and slapping his face. The aftermath of that one personal protest grew to become the Middle East movement known as the Arab Spring -- a wave of disparate events that included revolutions, protests, government overthrows, hopeful reform movements, and bloody civil wars. This book will be the...