The Cases
Forty-one cases open the chapters of the book, from the story of Talut and Goliath to the race for artificial intelligence. Each has its chapter and its lesson. In the book a story is a way into understanding, not a conclusive proof of it.
41 cases
- 1
Talut and Goliath
A believing few against an overbearing many
- 2
The Battle of Salamis
The Greek few against Persian might
- 3
Vietnam
When the jungle defeats an empire
- 4
The conquest of al-Andalus
When collapse within comes before the entry from without
- 5
The Mongol invasion
When the outside finishes what the inside exhausted
- 6
The French Revolution
When a nation explodes upon itself
- 7
The rise of the Ottomans
When the small fills the vacuum left by the great
- 8
The Battle of Karameh
A field contest between an occupying force and those who held firm
- 9
Bouazizi
When a single image sets a continent alight
- 10
The Egyptian revolution
When the internet generation defies the toughest security state
- 11
Gandhi
When the spirit is stronger than the cannon
- 12
The Intifada of the stones
When stones are stronger than tanks
- 13
Euromaidan
When a people refuses to have its fate chosen without it
- 14
The Algerian revolution
A million and a half martyrs as the price of freedom
- 15
The Syrian revolution
From the walls of Daraa to the fall of Damascus
- 16
The fall of apartheid
When injustice becomes a witness against itself
- 17
Spotlight
When four journalists take on an empire
- 18
Abu Ghraib
When a single image halts a war machine
- 19
South Korea, 1987
When one funeral moves an entire nation
- 20
The Carnation Revolution
When a flower stops a rifle
- 21
May 1968
When students overturn the table on history
- 22
The collapse of the Soviet Union
When a totalitarian system exhausts itself until it falls
- 23
The fall of the Berlin Wall
When the wall of fear breaks before the wall of concrete
- 24
The Great Depression
When catastrophe produces a new order
- 25
Martin Luther King
When the word moves what weapons cannot
- 26
The Sudanese revolution
When bread raises the banner of freedom
- 27
Greta and Fridays for Future
When a child moves the climate of the earth
- 28
The Bolshevik revolution
When hunger topples the crown
- 29
The Iranian revolution
A deferred contention that began in 1953
- 30
Galileo
When the telescope becomes a weapon
- 31
Darwin and the genes
When the human being becomes the subject and object of science
- 32
WikiLeaks
When information becomes a weapon
- 33
Al Jazeera and the Second Intifada
When the microphone becomes a weapon of contention
- 34
The Pentagon Papers
When the government takes the truth to court
- 35
Anonymous
When the mask becomes a weapon
- 36
The artificial intelligence race
The contention you cannot see, reshaping the world
- 37
Solidarity
When the union defeats the Party
- 38
Lithuania and the Baltic Way
When a human chain breaks the shackles of empire
- 39
The Prague Spring
When freedom is buried, then grows back from under the snow
- 40
The Saffron Revolution
When the saffron robe becomes a shield
- 41
Malek Bennabi
When an idea is an army