To be fair, he wrote the original as an analysis of how coups d'etat tended to evolve during the postcolonial period; the "practical guide" was just a bit of ac

To be fair, he wrote the original as an analysis of how coups d'etat tended to evolve during the postcolonial period; the "practical guide" was just a bit of academic provocation. (As Luttwak admits, he only knows of one coup that actually used his book as a resource, and it failed abysmally.) I'm totally with you that an entirely new book, post-Arab Spring, is in order, though -- perhaps one half devoted to how to overthrow a government, the other half on how to ruthlessly suppress dissent.