Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 208 pages
- Published by: Harper Perennial January 7, 2003
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0060516054
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0060516055
-
Book Dimensions:
7.8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
- Weighs: 6.4 ounces
Product Review
Bernard Lewis is the West's greatest historian and interpreter of the Near East. Books such as
The Middle East and
The Arabs in History are required reading for anybody who hopes to understand the region and its people. Now Lewis offers
What Went Wrong?, a concise and timely survey of how Islamic civilization fell from worldwide leadership in almost every frontier of human knowledge five or six centuries ago to a "poor, weak, and ignorant" backwater that is today dominated by "shabby tyrannies modern only in their apparatus of repression and terror." He offers no easy answers, but does provide an engaging chronicle of the Arab encounter with Europe in all its military, economic, and cultural dimensions. The most dramatic reversal, he says, may have occurred in the sciences: "Those who had been disciples now became teachers; those who had been masters became pupils, often reluctant and resentful pupils." Today's Arab governments have blamed their plight on any number of external culprits, from Western imperialism to the Jews. Lewis believes they must instead commit to putting their own houses in order: "If the peoples of Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will be no escape from a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, [and] poverty and oppression." Anybody who wants to understand the historical backdrop to September 11 would do well to look for it on these pages.
--John Miller
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
In the fields of Islamic and Middle Eastern history, few people are as prominent and prolific as Lewis, emeritus professor at Princeton. This time around, however, he has written a book with an inconsistent argument and an erratic narrative consisting of recycled themes from his earlier books, a work that sheds no new light on Middle Eastern history or on the events of September 11. His general argument is that Islamic civilization, once flourishing and tolerant, has in modern times become stagnant. This, he contends, has led to considerable soul-searching among Muslims, who ask themselves, "What went wrong?" But while sometimes the author states that there is a critical inquiry into the source of economic weakness in Muslim civilizations, other times he says that, instead of looking into the mirror, Muslims have blamed their problems on Europeans or Jews and thus fed their sense of victimhood. In medieval times, Lewis notes, Muslim civilization transmitted scientific ideas into Europe. But after offering intriguing examples of Muslim physicians and astronomers on the cutting edge in the 13th to 15th centuries, this chapter abruptly ends by stating that in modern times the roles have reversed, leaving the reader baffled over what between the 15th and the 20th centuries may have contributed to this reversal. Thus, the book raises more questions than it answers. Furthermore, Lewis discounts the effects of various decisions made by European and American colonial powers that negatively impacted the development of a democratic political community and a viable economy in the Middle East. Lewis's earlier books, such as The Muslim Discovery of Europe and The Middle East and the West, are much more useful for anyone seeking to understand the historical dynamic between these two parts of the world. First serial to Atlantic Monthly.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (Hardcover)
Bernard Lewis's earlier book, "The Muslim Discovery Of Europe",was wonderful, a revelation of what can be learned by examining history from an unfamiliar point of view. The current book, "What Went Wrong?", adds nothing to the former. Based on three lectures delivered in German, the new book repeatedly promises insights in one chapter which it forgets to deliver in the next. In short, it's poorly organized. A more serious objection, however, is that Professor Lewis directs almost all his attention to the achievements and failures of the governing classes and the intellectual elites of the Middle East, whom he seems to hold responsible for the stagnation of Islam. Meanwhile, he shows rather little awareness of "what went right" in Europe during the 1400 years since the first Muslim expansion. His own previous work revealed the extent to which the Golden Age of Islam was dependent on inheritances from the Roman Empire, and on the productivity of Greek Christians, Jews, Visigoths, and others who lived under Muslim domination. Since the perceived decline of Islam more or less begins with the final assimilation or suppression of those subject cultures, perhaps things were never as "right" as they seemed. Likewise, the Dark Ages of Europe were not as abject as Lewis's interpretation would have them. At the time of the Domesday Boke, for instance, in the rude north of 11th Century England, there were more water-powered MACHINES than in all the realms of Islam. In terms of labor efficiency, Europe had outpaced Islam by 950 AD. Any profound comparison of the histories of Islam and Europe must begin at the base of the social pyramid, not at the tip. In Europe, the "learning" of bookish monastics, based on classical authority, proved in the long run far less important than the "learning" of miners, sailors, metal-workers, and masons. Islam had its share of the learned elite, but where were its artisan-inventors like Gutenburg and self-taught engineers like Galileo? Asking the wrong questions, Lewis is unable to offer even a plausible hypothesis to account for the successes of Europe and the failures of Islam.
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