by Bernard Lewis
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Product Description
Bernard Lewis is recognized around the globe as one of the leading authorities on Islam. Hailed as "the world's foremost Islamic scholar" (Wall Street Journal), as "a towering figure among experts on the culture and religion of the Muslim world" (Baltimore Sun), and as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies" (New York Times), Lewis is nothing less than a national treasure, a trusted voice that politicians, journalists, historians, and the general public have all turned to for insight into the Middle East. Now, this revered authority has brought together writings and lectures that he has written over four decades, featuring his reflections on Middle Eastern history and foreign affairs, the Iranian Revolution, the state of Israel, the writing of history, and much more. The essays cover such urgent and compelling topics as "What Saddam Wrought," "Deconstructing Osama and His Evil Appeal," "The Middle East, Westernized Despite Itself," "The Enemies of God," and "Can Islam Be Secularized?" The collection ranges from two English originals of articles published before only in foreign languages, to previously unpublished writings, to his highly regarded essays from publications such as Foreign Affairs and The New York Review of Books. With more than fifty pieces in all, plus a new introduction to the book by Lewis, this is a valuable collection for everyone interested in the Middle East. Here then is a rich repository of wisdom on one of the key areas of the modern world--a wealth of profound reflections on Middle Eastern history, culture, politics, and current events.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Delightful, 2007-07-09
The book presents a extremely well written text and the reading is delightful. The author does a thorough approach to various aspects of the Islamic world.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
 A Collection Of Essays Covering A Wide Range Of Middle Eastern Issues, 2006-11-14
Bernard Lewis is perhaps the world's foremost scholar on the Middle East. He also, unlike many academics, has outstanding writing skills and is able to reach a wide audience. This particular book is not about a single subject. But rather is a collection of diverse essays written over a period of many years. Of course, some essays are more interesting and insightful than others. Also several of them come across as dated in respect to current events, such as those discussing Saddam Hussein, the threat of terrorism prior to 9/11, etc. Unfortunately, Bernard Lewis also supported the idea of taking military actions in Iraq and so some of his pre-war statements come across as profoundly misguided and not well thought out. Therefore I can't give this book the sort of "5 star" ringing endorsement that goes to his best works, such as "What Went Wrong?".
But still Lewis is so knowledgeable and astute about so many aspects of the Middle East that most of the book is well worth reading. The essays cover an enormous range of topics - for example, the Ottoman Empire, the historic conflict between Islam and Christianity and the current tensions between Israel and the Palestinians - all written about with expertise and insight. Readers can sharply increase their knowledge of the Middle East by this reading this as well as the many other excellent Bernard Lewis books.
0 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
 disappointed, 2006-10-04
Lewis' qualifications as mid-east scholar sound impressive but I was disappointed by this book. Although interesting, some of the essays are indicative of senility.
The title says "interpreting" so I will allow him creative license. Expect to find the kind of stuff you would look for in Stalin's treatise on the U.S. Constitution.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent collection of articles and speeches, 2006-09-11
This book is a collection of speeches and articles (most previously published) by Bernard Lewis, considered to be one of the world's foremost scholars on the Middle East. While he does not try to hide his personal thoughts and biases on issues (e.g. Israel), he presents everything with great erudition and scholarship. The subjects of these range from linguistics to religion to bibliography to, of course, history. Almost every aspect of Middle East studies is examined, as well as many discussions on other parts of the world. After reading the book you will have a much wider knowledge of the region, its peoples, history, culture, religions, etc. If I had to find faults with the book, I would say that there were two, nearly unavoidable, ones. First the articles cover a wide time-span, some are 60 years old! Of course that means the contents can be somewhat dated. Secondly, because these were all speeches and articles that were meant to stand alone, there is quite a bit of repetition of various materials. But nevertheless, I think this book is a must read for anyone who wants an insight into the Middle East.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A rich cornucopia, 2006-08-27
This is a series of very readable short papers by a world expert on the history of the Middle East, though there is a certain amount of overlap or repetition in them. They are divided into three parts: "Past History" (some 250 pages), "Current History" (about 200 pages), and a part about History as a subject and about Islamic historiography (about 70 pages). One or two of the papers in the first part are perhaps rather specialized for the general reader. Others are summaries of histories that will not provide much new information to the general public (e.g. on the emergence of Modern Israel). Newspaper readers will have formed some idea of the differences between the Sunni and the Shi'ites; the article on the latter gives an exceptionally good account of them. Some chapters may give information even to people who are rather well informed about the Middle East: I, for instance, found the excellent chapter on Pan-Arabism telling me many things I did not know, among them that, although Egyptians speak Arabic, Pan-Arabists did not initially consider Egypt an Arab country, nor that, until the time of Nasser, did the Egyptians themselves describe themselves as Arabs. And how many of even assiduous newspaper readers know anything of the 19th century history of Lebanon, sketched out here in a short article?
The last section has a fascinating paper showing how originally `Turkey' was a western term: the Ottomans used the word `Turk' only as a word denoting an ignorant peasant (and in the West, too, it frequently carried the connotation of 'barbarian'), but not to identify the nature of their empire or of its ruling ethnic group. Here the Ottomans followed the traditions of Islamic history which never concerned itself with national or ethnic differences. It is only with the advent of nationalism in the 19th century that the idea of the Turks as a nation developed in response, first, to the nationalism in the Balkans, then (rather later) in the Arabic lands, and finally of course, when Turkey proper was all that was left of the Ottoman Empire.
In several of the papers Lewis refers to the almost total lack of interest shown by Islamic countries in the West until the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century and the expansion of Western power into the Middle East in the 19th century. Thereafter patchy efforts to modernize the Islamic world by copying western models, often slowed up by the rejection of western values by conservatives, were only partially successful and failed to stem the advance of western power in the Middle East. This has greatly contributed to fuelling the Islamic resentment of the West, which the main theme of the second part of the book.
However, Lewis points out that even the most anti-western regimes have adopted not only western technology, but in many Islamic countries also such institutions as parliaments. From the western point of view, the role of women in most Islamic countries is still very restricted; but seen against earlier periods of Islam, women have seen noticeable advances in emancipation and education.
Lewis' analysis of the past is often masterly; but it would have served his reputation as an analyst of future trends better if some of his papers had not been reprinted. In 1991, after the liberation of Kuwait and Bush Senior's unwillingness to follow this up with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Lewis believed that, since Russia was unable and the USA unwilling to play an imperial role in the Middle East, the governments there `will be able to make their own decisions'. An article first published in 1996, still before the second Gulf War, describes as a `most telling indication of the new era' the fact that the West was no longer interested in bringing about regime change in the Middle East. In 1991 Lewis did not foresee the oil-thirst of China and India and opined that `the West will more easily find other sources of energy than the oil-producing states can find other cash customers.'
On the other hand, some older papers anticipate much that has become common currency later: in a 1957 paper, Lewis several times uses the phrase and the concept of `A Clash of Civilizations' to explain the tensions between Islam and the West, a full forty years before the publication of Samuel Huntingdon's famous book of the same title. Astonishingly accurate, too, is the forecast in 1969, when Nasser was still President, that his successor might very well make peace with Israel - which Sadat did ten years later.
In one fascinating lecture Lewis asks (and answers) the question why the Arab-Israeli conflict attracts so much more world interest than the many inter-Arab and inter-Muslim conflicts, some of which have involved oppression, casualties and suffering on a far greater scale than in all the Arab-Israeli disputes put together.
The book is pervaded by Lewis' empathetic understanding of all sides in the Middle East. That does not mean that he cannot be very forthright in his judgments, as in his attitude to fanaticism, in his regret at a number of features of Islamic history and society, or in his description of the double standards that have become habitual at the United Nations, exemplified by the 1975 condemnation of Zionism as a form of racism, a resolution supported by a number of nations and groups who use anti-Zionism as a cloak for their own racist antisemitism. The official Arab media, after all, then as now, propagated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and published cartoons that could have come straight out of the pages of the Stürmer.
Such criticisms has in recent years made Lewis the subject of some obloquy in the world of Islam, but the Arabic translator of one of his books described him as either a candid friend or an honourable enemy; and Lewis writes, 'I am content to abide by that judgment.'
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