Egyptian nationalism in the age of cotton

First paragraphs: Our current era of ascending right-wing nationalism is a fitting time for a history of left-wing nationalism. What can an earlier era of left-wing nationalism help us understand about the predicament we face? Ahmad Shokr’s book, Harvests of Liberation: Cotton, Capitalism, and the End of Empire in Egypt, is the latest in a long, rich historiography of the role of cotton in modern Egypt. Through a lens of cotton, Shokr offers an account of Nasserism, the ruling form of nationalism in post-independence Egypt, in the 1950s and 1960s. . . .