As the Cairo bureau chief of the New York Times from 2011 to 2015, Kirkpatrick arrived in Egypt shortly before the popular uprising against the Mubarak regime; he watched as a new president was elected and then deposed in a military coup that brought a ferocious crackdown on dissent. This eyewitness account of the turmoil combines analysis of Egyptian politics with the author’s experiences among ordinary people caught up in perplexing and heartbreaking events.