It was about three months before the January Revolution that Osman’s book Egypt on the Brink – From Nasser to Mubarak was first published by Yale University Press. In 2013, Osman released an updated edition titled Egypt on the Brink – From Nasser to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Four years later, Osman published Islamism: A History of Political Islam from the Fall of the Ottoman Empire to the Rise of ISIS.
In both books, Osman, an author and political analyst for several international development organizations, does exactly what he does on his YouTube channel: unweaves the tapestry before the reader/viewer to identify each constructing element of the past and the present.
In his own words, Tarek “delves into transformative moments and ideologies shaping the Arab world and the wider Middle East.” Osman is actually the creator of “The Making of the Arab World,” a BBC4 Radio documentary.
Having spent the first quarter of the 21st century in deconstructing and reconstructing many of the narratives regarding this region, Osman was equally busy delving into many new and older titles on history, philosophy, and other genres.
Speaking to Al-Ahram, he discussed some of the most compelling books he has read.
Why the West Rules — for Now was the first title on Osman’s list. The book was written by Ian Morris, a professor of history at Stanford University. It was published in 2010, shortly after Osman’s Egypt on the Brink. Like Osman’s book, it uses the past to help explain the future. The central argument is that Western “superiority” is not the result of any inherent inferiority in the East.
“Absolutely, Morris debunks this idea,” Osman said. He added that what makes the book compelling is that Morris examines Western dominance from several perspectives, not only intellectual development but also geography, climate, revolutions, and the availability of capital. “Finally, he concludes that maybe it was a bit of everything.”
“The book is based on a bottom-up way of thinking [that is put in place to] investigate 500 years with so many variables and to delve into the real history [of the peoples] away from cultural superiority,” Osman said.
Second on Osman’s list was Robert Service’s The End of the Cold War: 1985–1991. The book by the post-revisionist historian was published in 2015 and adds to his other notable works on the history of the Soviet Union and Russia, including his three-volume biographies of Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky.
Osman said the choice reflects his interest in major turning points in history and the role and choices of nations, not only politicians, but also political trends and broader social developments.
Peter Watson’s Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention from Fire to Freud comes third on Osman’s list.
“This is a major work that one reads on and off over time, but it is certainly a book one keeps returning to,” he said. “It is such a vast work that puts ideas into context in an inspiring way, but it cannot be absorbed all at once.”
Published in 2006, Watson’s book is arguably a very unique take on "the history of ideas" from prehistory to the present. “This is a fascinating way of telling history,” Osman said.
The book begins more than a million years ago, exploring the origins of early ideas and moving through developments such as writing and mathematics to the emergence of philosophy, law and democracy.
Osman also highlighted Donald Sassoon’s The Culture of the Europeans from 1800 to the Present, a book published in 2006 that traces the transformation of cultural production and consumption in Europe from the early 19th century to modern times. The music of the Beatles, the works of Émile Zola, Tintin comics and television soap operas all appear in the book as examples of Europe’s cultural evolution.
“Again, one thing I really liked about this book is its bottom-up methodology that offers a better space of analysis and understanding of the shaping of art and taste in Europe,” Osman said. He added that one cannot read this book without coming to conclude that the socio-political evolution has been integral to the making of cultural evolution, “at least in a great part.”
Osman said the book also raises questions about the role and social responsibility of wealthy families and major patrons in supporting knowledge and making art and culture accessible to wider audiences through funded initiatives.
“It actually begs the question of civil engagement,” he said. Osman referred to Hussein Al-Marsafi, a key literary figure in Egypt under Khedive Ismail, who was very interested in giving lectures to share knowledge about French literature of the 19th century.
“Incidently, Sassoon, a prominent British historian, was born in Cairo, Egypt, in the mid-1940s to a Jewish family,” Osman said.
Osman said that his reading of literature during the past 25 years has not been extensive. However, he greatly enjoyed The Longing of the Dervish (Shawq Al-Dervish) by Sudanese novelist Hammour Ziada.
The novel was first published in Arabic in 2014 before being translated into English. The widely acclaimed work brings together Sudan’s modern socio-political history with the history of Sufism in the country and examines the cultural and religious impact of the Anglo-Egyptian occupation.
“I really enjoyed the flow and the language of the book,” Osman said.
In 1972, Fatehi Ghanem’s well-known novel Zeinab and the Throne (Zeinab wal-Arsh) was published. It depicts the relationship between politics and journalism from the final years of Egypt’s monarchy through the early decades of the Free Officers’ rule, ending with the country’s military defeat in 1967. The novel was later adapted into a highly successful soap opera in 1980.
However, it was only a few years ago that Osman came round to “reading and enjoying” the two volumes. He said that the novel “is not just a very well-written and unique work, but it also carries some clear Dostoevskian traits.”
Osman is an avid reader of the works of the 19th-century Russian philosopher and novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. He dedicated a full episode of his YouTube channel to discussing Dostoevsky’s works as reflections on history and socio-political change, bringing together history and philosophy.
Osman noted that the episode was among the most viewed on his channel.
“It probably came second or third after the episode on Ibn Khaldun,” he said, referring to the 14th-century Arab-Muslim scholar best known for his masterpiece Al-Muqaddimah (The Introduction), widely regarded as one of the pioneering works of sociology.
“I think there is a deep thirst for knowledge out there, and I think people are really interested to learn about history and philosophy,” Osman said.
Among Osman’s most recent acquisitions at the Cairo International Book Fair, which ended in February, were books on the political history of the Al-Moutazillah, an Islamic school of thought that emerged in Basra and Baghdad in the second century of Hijra.
He also bought a book on the political circles surrounding Muhammad Ali Pasha, another on the Ottoman perspective on the 1839–1841 war launched by Egyptian forces led by Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Muhammad Ali, against Ottoman territories.
His purchases also included titles presenting alternative historical narratives about Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan, the founder of the first Umayyad Caliphate and a controversial figure in early Islamic history, as well as a book on the history of the humanities in the Arab world in both pre-Islamic and Islamic periods.
Biographies were also on Osman’s list of purchases at this year’s Cairo International Book Fair, including those of the pre-1952 Coptic politician Salib Pasha Sami and Sami Abdel-Nour.
Osman’s planned reading for the second quarter of the century appears extensive. It is largely focused on history and philosophy, with particular attention to Egypt in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
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