If We Burn: Mass Protest, Major Setbacks, and Vital Lessons for the New Resistance

＂A remarkable new history＂ (David Wallace-Wells, New York Times Magazine) of a decade aflame--and what we can learn from its embers

From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. Yet we are not living in more just and democratic societies as a result. Acclaimed journalist Vincent Bevins carried out hundreds of interviews around the world, guided by a single, puzzling question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for?

The result is a stirring work of history that connects events in a dozen countries and reveals that conventional wisdom on revolutionary change is gravely misguided. From the so-called Arab Spring to Gezi Park in Turkey, from Ukraine’s Euromaidan to student rebellions in Chile and Hong Kong, Bevins provides a blow-by-blow account of street movements and their consequences, recounted in gripping detail. In this groundbreaking study of an extraordinary chain of events, protesters and major actors look back on successes and defeats, offering urgent lessons for the future.

Vincent Bevins is an award-winning journalist and correspondent. He covered Southeast Asia for the Washington Post, reporting from across the entire region and paying special attention to the legacy of the 1965 massacre in Indonesia. He previously served as the Brazil correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, also covering nearby parts of South America, and before that he worked for the Financial Times in London. Among the other publications he has written for are the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, the Guardian, Foreign Policy, the New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and more. Vincent was born and raised in California and spent the last few years living in Jakarta.