The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years by Bernard Lewis

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Synopsis

In a sweeping and vivid survey, renowned historian Bernard Lewis charts the history of the Middle East over the last 2,000 years, from the birth of Christianity through the modern era, focusing on the successive transformations that have shaped it. Elegantly sritten, scholarly yet accessible, The Middle East is the most comprehensive single volume history of the region ever written from the world's foremost authority on the Middle East.

Library Journal

A noted Middle East historian, Lewis (Islam and the West, LJ 5/1/93) has written a 2000-year history of a region stretching from Libya to Central Asia. He concludes with the effects of the Gulf War and the entry into negotiations of the PLO and the government of Israel. Beginning his history before the rise of Christianity and Islam, Lewis seeks to illuminate the connections between the ancient Middle East and the modern region. He outlines the histories of pre-Islamic Arabia and the two great empires of Sasanid Persia and Byzantium. These entities formed the backdrop for the rise of the Prophet Muhammed and the formation of the Islamic polity. Lewis concentrates on the cultural, social, and economic changes in the region while keeping the political narrative to a minimum. He includes many direct quotations from a variety of contemporary sources to highlight a given period and place, providing an immediacy of experience not offered by conventional narrative or analysis. Highly recommended.-Robert J. Andrews, Duluth P.L., Minn.

Biography

The Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University -- dubbed "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies," by The New York Times -- Islam expert Bernard Lewis has raised both awareness levels and eyebrows with topical bestsellers like What Went Wrong? and The Crisis of Islam.