REVOLT: Inside the Trenches of the Uprising Against Globalization
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Nadav Eyal
Nonfiction, 2021
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Blending astute reporting and acute analysis, leading journalist Nadav Eyal’s new book — a #1 bestseller in Israel— is an eloquent challenge to prevailing wisdoms on the rise of nationalist populism and waning of liberal globalization. Eyal illuminates the benign and malign forces that have so rapidly transformed our economic, political, and cultural realities. He takes readers through what he describes as a global revolt, demonstrating how it expanded from the avant-garde to the mainstream politics of the West, including the triumphs of Brexit and Trump. This portrayal dramatizes the conflict between globalization’s achievements (lifting millions out of poverty) and its enormous costs (deepening economic inequality, the refugee crisis, the upsurge of politicized fundamentalism, and the emergence of populist nationalism). Eyal sheds light not only on the economic and cultural revolution that has come to define our time, but on the counter-revolution waged by those it has marginalized and exploited.
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REVOLT humanizes these tectonic shifts by investigating them as local seismic vibrations. Joining vivid storytelling with history, and deftly distilling decades of reporting, Eyal introduces us to Pennsylvania coal miners, anarchist communes on the outskirts of Athens, a Japanese town suffering from declining fertility rates, neo-Nazis in Germany, and to the Syrian refugee families he accompanies from the shores of Greece to their destination in Germany. Into these colorful reports from the present, Eyal weaves compelling lessons from the past: from colonialist Haiti to the opium wars in China to the American Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe.
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With wit and wisdom, REVOLT is also a passionate rejoinder to those who would succumb to fatalism. In REVOLT, Eyal issues this warning: if we do not summon the requisite political will, the mutiny against globalization threatens to become a battle against the values and achievements of progress itself.
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Rights Sold:
Brazil: Editora Alta; China: Booky; Croatia: Profil; Czech Republic: Jan Melvil; Germany: Ullstein; Holland: De Arbeiderspers; Israel: Yedioth; Italy: La Nave de Teseo; Korea: Kachi; Poland: WA.B.; Romania: Polirom; Serbia: Laguna; Spain: Debate; Sweden: Bonniers; Taiwan: Commonwealth; Thailand: Amarin; UK: Picador; USA/Canada: Ecco
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Reviews:
With dispatches from around the globe, Nadav Eyal explores why so many people are rejecting interdependence, even at a time when we need each other more than ever. The message is clear that we need to redefine the terms of our interdependence—to minimize the dangers, spread the benefits more broadly, and build a global community capable of confronting our collective challenges together.
- Bill Clinton
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The Revolt that haunts the world ends up haunting the reader with this compelling and penetrating epic on the crisis of globalization and the liberal order. It is written with Eyal’s depth of thought, superb gift for storytelling and absolute integrity. A must, for any thoughtful reader.
- Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister of Israel
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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
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