He is the author of Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History Writing in Twentieth-Century Egypt (University of California Press, 2009). His new book, No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean Paul Sartre and Decolonization, was published by the University Press of Chicago. His work is supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany and the Forum Transregionale Studienresearch in Berlin. He is currently at work on a new book tentatively entitled Sacred Liberation: Decolonization in The Middle East and Beyond.