Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution

By artappraiser on Fri, 02/18/2011 - 7:30pm |

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times, February 16, 2011

....His name is Gene Sharp. Stoop-shouldered and white-haired at 83, he grows orchids, has yet to master the Internet and hardly seems like a dangerous man.

But for the world’s despots, his ideas can be fatal.

Few Americans have heard of Mr. Sharp. But for decades, his practical writings on nonviolent revolution — most notably “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” a 93-page guide to toppling autocrats, available for download in 24 languages — have inspired dissidents around the world, including in Burma, Bosnia, Estonia and Zimbabwe, and now Tunisia and Egypt....

URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17sharp.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage