The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 312 pages
• Published by: Basic Books July 21, 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0465010229
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0465010226
• Book Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 10.4 ounces

Product Description
Whether by choice or not, the West finds itself in a low-grade yet bitter war with Islamic fanaticism. It is a war the West is singularly ill-equipped to fight. The foe is resistant to any of the normal methods of conflict resolution such as negotiation, economic sanctions, or conventional armed confrontation. Since the Enlightenment, the West has forgotten how to oppose fanaticism, and it is Lee Harris’s goal to remind us what we are up against.

In The Suicide of Reason, he explains the logic of fanatical movements from the Crusades through Nazism to radical Islam; describes how the Enlightenment overcame fanatical thinking in the West; shows why most Western attempts to address the problem are doomed to fail; and offers strategies by which liberal internationalism can defend itself without becoming a mirror of the tribal forces it is trying to defeat.

About The Author
Lee Harris is the author of Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History and a frequent contributor to Policy Review, the Wall Street Journal’s “Opinion Journal,” and other publications, both print and online. He lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West (Hardcover) If you have read Harris' Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History you have read the first installment of this book. But Harris has had a few more years to observe and think about the clash between Islam's followers and those whom they declare to be "infidels." Harris examines fanaticism with a look through history that most in the West have no understanding of. His observations of the Crusades, Fascist Germany, Stalin's USSR and other such movements are fresh insights into their ability to find common ground with current Islamists' view of the righteousness of their cause. Harris is also able to show that the West's victory over fanaticism, based upon the Enlightenment, in many ways, have given most in the West a false sense of inevitability when it comes to a generally assumed myopia that Western notions of a civilized society will somehow prevail. Harris is never "politically correct" but usually correct about politics including the polity of Islam and the West's arrogance in thinking that they can count on their world always being the victor without having to lift a finger to win. While I don't necessarily agree with everything Harris says in this book, it is one that everyone should read. Another great book.