The Middle East

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To gain a better understanding of contemporary Middle Eastern culture and society, which is steeped in tradition, one should look closely at its history. Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, considered one of the world's foremost authorities on the Middle East, spans 2000 years of this region's history, searching in the past for answers to questions that will inevitably arise in the future.

Drawing on material from a multitude of sources, including the work of archaeologists and scholars, Lewis chronologically traces the political, economical, social, and cultural development of the Middle East, from Hellenization in antiquity to the impact of westernization on Islamic culture. Meticulously researched, this enlightening narrative explores the patterns of history that have repeated themselves in the Middle East.

From the ancient conflicts to the current geographical and religious disputes between the Arabs and the Israelis, Lewis examines the ability of this region to unite and solve its problems and asks if, in the future, these unresolved conflicts will ultimately lead to the ethnic and cultural factionalism that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Concrete-Bound History, 2008-07-21
This book serves as an epitome for the wrong way to teach history. Instead of recognizing history as an integrated narrative on human civilization, Dr. Lewis' book presents Middle Eastern history as a database of names, dates and facts. Granted, you will find plenty of information in here on the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, the Arab conquests, the Mamluks, the Seljuks and the like. However, you will not find emphasis on the important individuals or the widely held ideas that shaped and drove Middle Eastern history.

For example, al-Ghazali, who is one of the most important intellectuals in Middle Eastern history, is hardly mentioned at all in this book. Before al-Ghazali, there was a golden age in the Middle East, where Muslim scholars in Baghdad were translating an extensive number of works from the ancient Greeks and Muslims were making unprecedented advances in mathematics, medicine, astronomy and philosophy. However, it was al-Ghazali who in his work "The Incoherence of the Philosophers" essentially single-handedly persuaded the Muslim world that reason and faith are incompatible and therefore reason (i.e., Aristotelian thought) must be rejected in favor of faith. In terms of ideas, the wide acceptance of al-Ghazali's work is the most significant turning point in Middle Eastern history and yet al-Ghazali himself is only mentioned on about 4 out of 400 pages of this book.

Whenever I inform friends and colleagues that I enjoy reading about Middle Eastern history, Bernard Lewis' books are almost invariably recommended to me. If his other books are like this one then I do not recommend the works of Bernard Lewis for recreational reading. Nevertheless, I am still giving this book three stars, since it does contain a wealth of (unfortunately unintegrated) facts.


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Boring even for a history buff, 2008-04-13
Even for someone who enjoys "real" and substantial history books, as opposed to more trendy light reading, this was too boring to finish. The level of detail compares to a Norman Davies level but without the same kind of purpose or cohesion.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

A Good Introduction to a Complex History, 2008-02-28
I cannot agree with the statements of some that this is "dull" or "booring". I am not aware that a serious reader expects non-fiction, history books to be exciting! I think that says more about the reader than the author and this book.

Professor Lewis has done and excellent job of providing an introduction to the history of this area and setting out a foundational explanation of the genesis of problems that exist today. I found the organization difficult to stay with at times but I am more accustomed to a linear historical format.

One does not have to be a serious student of history to appreciate what this book offers. I would recommend this book highly, especially for an understanding on a very basic level, of why the U.S. has no business invading the area.


2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

A Brief Review of a Boring Book, 2007-11-28
Like many of you, I had heard good things about this book, but it turned out to be a disappointing slog. How this or that caliph raised taxes and other equally scintillating topics get hundreds of pages of stuffy prose. The Crusades, the fall of Constantinople, Timur and anything else exciting are lucky to get a few paragraphs. The author's feelings about Islam are also a bit over the top: he describes various aspects of this religion as "pristine" at least four times that I counted. The history of Islam in the middle east (especially the tedious bureaucratic details) is the real topic of this book.


10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

The embalming of Middle Eastern history, 2007-02-12
I first read Lewis's book about five years ago and found it slow going. It made no significant impression on my mind. In the intervening years I've read fifty or more books concerning the history and politics of the Middle East. Fortified with new knowledge I decided to give the renowned Lewis another reading.

My second reading of the colossus of Middle Eastern history was just as unrewarding as the first. Professor Lewis, in this book, comes across as boring, meandering and forgettable. The Amazon reviewer who states "Lewis chronologically traces the political, economical, social, and cultural development of the Middle East" never read this book. There is nothing chronological about it.

Lewis warns us on the first page of the Preface that this book will not concentrate on "political and military events of the Middle East" but on "social, economic, and above all cultural change." But he doesn't warn us that this information will be presented in a confusing hodge-podge of lifeless prose. In an apparent attempt to be "objective" the great historian treats every subject in the same monotone. He is so cautious that every statement is qualified, nuanced, digressed upon and then qualified again until the reader's mind wanders.

The prodigious Professor Lewis was 80 years old when this book came out in 1995. He'd already written twenty major works of Middle Eastern History, starting in 1940. His magnum opus was the 1978 four volume "Cambridge History of Islam." I doubt that this present book was newly written. It reads as though many parts were taken from his previous work, and conflated into a "new book."

There is nothing wrong with writers recycling their previous published material, but Lewis makes no mention of doing so. Yet this is the only explanation that makes sense to me for the unevenness of the book and the confusing way it is presented. At times it reads as though Lewis shuffled parts of his previous work together randomly, like a deck of cards. (Or, maybe it was parts of his memory he was shuffling.)

The last section of the book, Part V of V, "The Challenge of Modernity" is the most interesting and relevant part of the book. But even here Lewis often tends to veer off course and get bogged down in detail and digression.

"The Middle East: A Brief History of The Last 2,000 Years" has polarized Amazon's reviewers more than any book I know. It is either acclaimed or discredited; there's not much middle ground. I give the work three stars because it does contain a mass of historical information. I take two stars off due to Lewis's leaden prose, confusing presentation and lack of illuminating interpretation.

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