The war journalist and contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine Scott Anderson discusses his new book Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart (Signal, 2017), a look at the Middle East following the Arab Spring through today and into the future, with Joseph Planta.

Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart by Scott Anderson (Signal, 2017). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Fractured Lands

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, at TheCommentary.ca.

The uprisings that began in 2011, the Arab Spring that shook the Middle East and North Africa are the premise of the new book by Scott Anderson. In the book, he looks at how the deposing of dictators appeared to be a triumph of democracy, instead gave way to brutal civil wars, the terrors of the Islamic State, and the global refugee crisis. Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart is a gripping book about the complex causes of the unravelling in the Middle East, and how its origins with the United States’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, through to today, have contributed to the region’s instability and uncertainty, and well into the future. Mr. Anderson’s reporting, which constituted an entire issue of the New York Times Magazine last August is the core of this book. It looks at the region through the eyes of six individuals: an Egyptian, a Libyan, a Kurd, a Syrian, an Iraqi, and an Iraqi turned ISIS soldier. I’ll get Mr. Anderson to tell us about this book, his work, and this region. Scott Anderson is a veteran war correspondent who has reporter in many strife-torn countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. He is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, whose work has also appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, Harper’s, and Outside. He is the author of the novels: Moonlight Hotel, and Triage, and the non-fiction books Lawrence in Arabia, The Man Who Tried to Save the World, and The 4 O’clock Murders. With his brother Jon Lee Anderson, he co-wrote War Zones, and Inside the League. This new book is published by Signal, which is an imprint of McClelland & Stewart. Joining me from Charlottesville, Virginia today, please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, Scott Anderson; Mr. Anderson, good morning.

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