Publisher's Weekly Review
A first-hand witness to the protests in Cairo, Mason (Live Working or Die Fighting) dissects the revolutionary events of 2011 in Egypt, Britain, Greece, and America, before moving on to discuss the history, sociology, economics, and politics of unrest. From the 1848 "wave of revolutions" across Europe, to the French, Czechoslovakian, and American protests of 1968, Mason posits a common cause: the disconnect between the masses and the political systems and power structures. At the forefront of these modern uprisings are unemployed youth, the urban underclass, and organized labor. Armed with technology and social media-cell phone video cameras, Twitter, YouTube, etc.-protestors are able to mobilize sans central leadership, broadcast without Big Media mitigating their message, and-perhaps most importantly-use digital space to take to the physical streets. Mason gets bogged down in discussing the sociology of poverty and enumerating individual cases of the poor struggling to succeed, but overall his study stands as a good primer on a young revolution and its predecessors, and where we might go from here. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
BBC journalist and blogger Mason has observed and reported from global uprisings in Egypt, Athens, New York, Manila, and many other places in the past few years. He is especially cogent on the power and effectiveness of the new social media tools in the hands of millions of far-flung individuals. His original post, "Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere" (ow.ly/9zbXg), went viral. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
