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Title Description
For many centuries, the world of Islam was at the forefront of human achievement - the foremost military and economic power in the world, the leader in the arts and sciences of civilization. Christian Europe, a remote land beyond its northwestern frontier, was seen as an outer darkness of barbarism and unbelief from which there was nothing to learn or to fear. And then everything changed, as the previously despised West won victory after victory, first on the battlefield and in the marketplace, then in almost every aspect of public and even private life. In this intriguing volume, Bernard Lewis examines the anguished reaction of the Islamic world as it tried to understand why things had changed, how they had been overtaken, overshadowed, and to an increasing extent dominated by the West.
"A compelling book. Learned and urgent at the same time." (Fouad Ajami, The John Hopkins University)
Customer Reviews
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Reviewer: COLEY DUNCAN | May 18, 2006 |
This is not a modern history, but a successful attempt to reach back into the cultural and religious roots of the Islamic world so one can understand why this once great power has lost its scientific, cultural and military world dominance. The author does not try to draw too many conclusions for the reader, but provides the facts and various arguments letting the reader decide.
This is a very information dense (a lot of meaning in a few words) work so the reader must stay on his toes to keep up. One cannot listen to this book and not know that the author is a very smart man. I found myself rewinding fairly often to pick up an important point I had missed. The value of what he has to say is well worth the effort.
Few will be able to fully comprehend this book in a single reading. I have read Hamlet 20 times and still have not completely mastered it. I expect his book to require three readings to master the author's message to my satisfaction.
I highly, highly recommend. |
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Reviewer: Thomas Preston (see other books I've reviewed) | May 21, 2004 |
| This is scholarly book by a well known professor at Princeton. No book I have seen gives a better background on the current clash of cultures we are now struggling with. It is well read. Expect to think about Islam in a new way. |
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Reviewer: Michael Washburn (see other books I've reviewed) | April 15, 2004 |
| Basic Moslem history peppered with why certain aspects are significant to the modern-day state of affairs. Good, but not what I was looking for. |
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Reviewer: Joel Colley (see other books I've reviewed) | November 12, 2003 |
| Lewis gives the listener an important window to the fundamental foundational matrix of the world of Islam. If only our "leaders" would read this book to understand the futility of forcing a "constitutional democracy (republic)" on a belief structure totally devoid of the concept of the "separation of Church and State". Under Islam, the Church and the State reside under one tent, leaving the West as perplexed viewing Islam as Islam is perplexed and anguished viewing the "barbarians" to the West. This is an important literary work, and it should be required reading for our State Department. |
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Reviewer: Jim Smith (see other books I've reviewed) | November 11, 2002 |
| It really says nothing about "what went wrong", except some historical perspective, and covers very little in the 20th Century. Focuses in detail on a few areas, while totally lacking in giving the reader a "big picture" view of how the Islamic world got to where it is today. |
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Reviewer: RICHARD ROCK (see other books I've reviewed) | October 5, 2002 |
| This was a difficult book to listen to (although not because of the reader - he is perhaps the best BOT reader I have listened to yet). The book is very dense with information and requires a great deal of focus. The subject is very important in this post-9/11 world, however, and readers who are seeking a better understanding of at least one source of the angst which people from the Middle East exhibit would do well to read it. The first two chapters and the conclusion are particularly useful - I found that it dragged a bit in the middle. |
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Reviewer: David Finkelstein | August 18, 2002 |
| I found this book to be facsinating and very, very important. It did not purport to be history of the Islamic world and it did not promise to render a judgment on anything in the Islamic world. Instead, it said it would provided insights into the interaction between the Muslim world and the West and the attitudes and feelings that now exist. It did. |
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Reviewer: Anonymous | July 16, 2002 |
I found this book to be instructive, but less than absorbing. The saving grace for my enjoyment was reader, John Lee.
The tone of the book is along the line of a PhD dissertation...lots of historical facts about the early years of Islam and the Ottoman Empire with lots of dates, battles and obscure leaders, with some conclusions at the end. However, it does give the typical reader with little background in the Islamic faith of knowledge of Muslim peoples around the globe some real understsanding about how the adherents got that way and why they hate the "infidels" of the western world.
The lowly status of women in Muslim society is given as one of the main reasons for "what went wrong." The religion as given the Muslim leaders their justification for keeping women in an inferior status to men...thus wasting the talent and brainpower of half their population. |
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Reviewer: Anonymous (see other books I've reviewed) | May 22, 2002 |
| I was disappointed. Dull and dry, this book appears to be nothing more than a bunch of lecture notes from a college course on the Ottoman Empire. There are a few nuggets of interest here and there, but no analysis of the roots of today's epic conflict. It doesn't even cover the 20th century! |
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Reviewer: Anonymous (see other books I've reviewed) | May 12, 2002 |
| As someone who lives overseas in an African country where Muslims comprise a significant segement of the population, I found this book to be unhelpfully deferential to the various Islamic regimes it discusses. Lewis minimizes the brutality that characterizes much (though not all) of the history of the Islamic, highlights the failings of the West, and minimizes the contributions of the West to humanizing the governments of the world. This book is, however, one of the few accounts of the development of modern Islam that's available on tape. Be forewarned that the book is brief and relatively uncritical in its outlook. |
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