Alan Mikhail, Chace Family Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Yale University, is widely recognized for his work in Middle Eastern and global history.
His new book My Egypt Archive is at once a chronicle of Egypt in the 2000s and a historian’s bildungsroman. Narrating the practices, oppressions, and joys of archival research, it provides a singular on-the-ground account of the everyday authoritarianism that produced the Arab Spring in Egypt.
His previous book God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World won the Gold Medal in World History from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award, was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, and was named a book of the year by the Times Literary Supplement, History Today, Publishers Weekly, and Glamour.
Four earlier books and over thirty scholarly articles helped to establish the field of Middle East environmental history. Under Osman’s Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History received the Fuat Köprülü Book Prize from the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association and was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History won the the Roger Owen Book Award of the Middle East Studies Association. Both it and The Animal in Ottoman Egypt won Yale’s Gustav Ranis International Book Prize. Mikhail’s articles in the American Historical Review, Environmental History, and the International Journal of Middle East Studies received prizes as well.
His books and articles have been translated into a dozen languages, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Literary Hub, and Time and was featured on Jeopardy!