Volume 43, Number 11 · June 20, 1996
The Great Contest
By William H. McNeill
The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years
by Bernard Lewis
Scribner, 433 pp., $30.00
Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Age of Discovery
by Bernard Lewis
Oxford University Press, 101 pp., $16.95
Bernard Lewis writes history with an air of lofty detachment, a fine mastery of the English language, and an easy familiarity with Arabic and Turkish archival and literary sources. The result is delightful and impressive, and for readers familiar only with the European side of the long story of Muslim-Christian encounters he has much to teach. On the other hand, he neglects the interactions between Muslims and Indians, and Muslims and Chinese, and as result his portrait of the last two thousand years of Middle Eastern history is sharply skewed westward.
Review, 4198 words
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