Review: Revolution 2:0: A Memoir and Call to Action

Revolution 2:0: A Memoir and Call to Action by Wael Ghonim

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In this book, Wael Ghonim is talking about his involvement in the Egyptian politics until Mubarak's step down on Feb 11, 2011. The book offers good background about most of the events that led to the revolution and the stepping down of Mubarak. The story is very excited especially when you follow how the social media and the Internet slowly changed in Egyptians' attitude which led to massive protests all over the country.



The most thing I like about the book is that Wael tried to not be biased in the events he wasn't a part of. For example, he mentioned three possible reasons to the attacks of the police offices during the protests and he said that till today we don't know for sure which one is the truth. I sensed also the honesty in the book. I can't claim any statement in this book, which documents an event I am aware of, to be false or wrongly misinterpreted.



One of my observations about the book is  that it is so plain. Wael mentioned in the book that he used to add photos and videos to his fan page and he thinks that an image worths 1000 words. However, in his book he didn't include any images. Sometimes he wrote two paragraphs to describe a scene in the protests which would have been better to just put the photo of this scene.



My second observation is that the book lacks statistics about the political life during Mubarak's age. I think it would have been very supportive to mention the number of people got tortured and arrested for political reasons, the rate of unemployment, the rate of illiterates and poverty. Also, I think it is worth mentioning why Egyptians feel injustice by specific examples  such as sinking of Elsalam ship that caused 1400 Egyptians to lose their lives but the government let the owner of the ship scape because of his relation to Mubarak's regime. I think using statistics and examples would have shown the world why people sacrificed their lives to end Mubarak's regime.





Congratulation Wael and waiting for your next book to document the period in which Egypt is governed by SCAF.







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