If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution

Vincent Bevins is an award-winning journalist. He covered Southeast Asia for the Washington Post, and served as Brazil correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. He previously worked for the Financial Times in London, and now contributes to outlets like The New York Times Magazine and the London Review of Books.Vincent's first book, The Jakarta Method, was published in 2020 to critical acclaim. His works have been translated into fifteen languages.

This book is phenomenal. A thrilling, blow by blow (and often live on-the-ground) analysis of how the various people-led movements and revolutions over the last decade succeeded or failed. Incalculably useful to anyone who'd like to make substantive, enduring changes to their town, country or even the world. It's an incredible follow up to The Jakarta Method - which focused on the development of the CIA and the seismic and often horrific global consequences - and sees Bevins applying his near-heroic methods of investigation to more recent events. It's about as good as journalism gets and Bevins is uniquely positioned to get the goods, just due to the sheer amount of time he spends in the places he writes about, fostering relationships and suffering from unquenchable curiosity. I cannot think of a book that so soberly and forensically analysed the very recent past and looked at what went right and what went terribly wrong. The highest praise I can give If We Burn is to say that it would be criminally negligent not to read it if you'd like to change the world. And why wouldn't you?