With the demise of the second Arab autocrat within a month, people power seemed on the verge of revolutionizing the Middle East, a region known for its monarchs and presidents for life. Abdalla Hassan's book unpacks Egypt’s media and political dynamics—tracing events leading up to the 2011 revolution, the 18 days of uprising, military rule, an Islamist president’s year in office, his ouster by the army, and the reestablishment of the military presidency. Expanded freedoms of expression, in the press and on the streets, have contracted with the skillful reinvention of repression. This is the story of an uprising.

Managing Editor Sarah El-Shaarawi conducts an in depth review of BBC Media Action's policy breif After the Arab Uprisings: The prospects for a media that serves the public, examining the viability of their proposed recommendations for reforming Arab national broadcasters.

In Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography, Ariella Azoulay interrogates issues of visual culture, in particular photography, the role of spectator-critics, body politics, and citizenship, through the lens of the Palestinian struggle. She argues that the boundaries of the aesthetic, the political, and the civil perpetuate power relations of nation-states and exclusions. Kiranjeet Kaur Dhillon reviews.

Although the book is poorly rendered into English, Gertz and Khleifi offer an insightful look into Palestinian film and draw an important link between art and politics in Palestinian society, says Sonia Rosen.

This volume is a welcome start to the long-overdue project of challenging stereotypes of the Gulf as a backward, tribal culture that has been overwhelmed by global cosmopolitanism, argues Reviews Editor Samer Abboud.

Drawing on Sakr’s deep and sophisticated industry expertise, the book is a must-read for anyone interested in the political economy of the Arab television industry, writes Youssef Masrieh.

Flagg Miller’s The Moral Resonance of Arab Media remains at a rarefied, theoretical level, but bears ample rewards for advanced students of Arabic literature, media studies, communication anthropology and public sphere studies, writes Zuzanna Olszewska.

Journalism in Iran and Media, Culture and Society in Iran will help academic and general audiences navigate between simplistic ‘reformist versus hardliner’ narratives by bringing social science perspectives to bear on the historical development and contemporary diversity of Iran’s media, writes Managing Editor Will Ward.

“Shafik shows that cinema has enabled filmmakers and viewers to go through cathartic exercises to express dissatisfaction, grief, imaginary empowerment and solidarity, and argues that this artistic channel is especially important because Egypt lacks an adequate civil society,” writes Nesreen Khashan.

Josh Rushing’s Mission Al Jazeera is cookie-cutter "celebrity bio" whose analysis of Al Jazeera and other Arab media developments relies heavily on other scholars, says Tom Scudder.