Review: Third Horseman by William Rosen

William Rosen is at it again! The Third Horseman wonderfully combines history and science to make an exciting book on Europe in the 14th Century.

Rosen is a popular historian, and this is the third book I've read by him. Although his background seems to be from the editing and publishing world, he seems to have now carved a niche for himself in the popular history sphere.

The Third Horseman is of course drawing our attention to the mythical third horseman of the apocalypse, who brings famine in his wake.

The Great Famine which lasted roughly 7 years in the early part of the 14th Century --although the worst years were the 1315-17 period-- completely ravaged Europe, especially North-West Europe. The reasons, according to Rosen, were mainly due to sudden change in the climate of the North Atlantic. This is somewhat backed by data recorded in tree rings and ice cores, but clearly Rosen is uncomfortable with these topics and we are advised to take his hypothesis at face value. What we do know for sure is that an era known as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) abruptly came to an end in the 14th Century. The MWP --which lasted from the 8th to the 14th Centuries-- was marked by higher average temperatures across the globe than any time, well since the advent of early European civilization. It was certainly far warmer (about 1-3 degrees centigrade warmer, per annum, which is heck of a lot) in the MWP than say the Roman Empire. According to Rosen, and many other historians now, the MWP uncannily coincides with the heyday of the so-called Dark Ages (Rosen doesn't use this term, he prefers early Middle Ages). Feudalism and the Church rule, and we can see both these receding with the warm temperatures.

The sudden change in climate in the North Atlantic meant that NW Europe received devastating rainfall in 1315. This lead to wholescale destruction of farmland in England, the Low Countries, France, and although the records are somewhat sketchy here: Scandinavia, Germany and the Baltic. Since these were the days before any kind of nation-states existed (although, France and England were somewhat on that path), and no central authority existed and trade was limited, famine was sure to follow. Rosen spends quite a bit of time detailing the horrific effects of food-deprivation on an already malnourished, mainly peasant population of Europe. As if agriculture weren't alone hit, Europe was also hit by a barrage of diseases which mainly affected cattle (England and Flanders both depended on sheep, indeed as Rosen puts it: English economy was wool). Whether this was a freak co-incidence or related to the anomalous climate is left unexplained. 

The mortality rate approached 10% across most of Europe, and in certain places such as towns (although townspeople were richer, they didn't produce their own food which really came back to haunt them) or border areas where nobody's writ ran, a staggering 20% to 30% people died. 

However, most of the book is given over to the other major cause of the famine, and another horseman of the apocalypse: war. This to me was the main thread that gave narrative drive to the book. Rosen excels at writing with verve and brought alive 14th Century feuding, mainly between England and Scotland. William Wallace (since this a popular history book, references to Braveheart are many), Longshanks and Robert the Bruce regularly appear. Also intertwined are few episodes set in France, mainly the fight between the Flemings and the nascent French state; and the last bit even covers the Great Famine's effect on Germany coupled with war between two rival claimants for the Holy Roman Empire's throne.

It is clear that if the 14th Century European world wasn't so violent, the famine's effects wouldn't be so dreadful. The raids carried out by the English, Scots, French and Flemings in their rivals territories, especially when these areas' agricultural production had taken a severe hit, further damaged the chances of the villagers recovering from the famine. Unfortunately, they paid the brunt of the costs of the war, and a difference can be noticed in that usually before the 14th Century, in the MWP, the armies put on the field where usually much smaller and the wars didn't last as long. But the Scots managed to turn the fight between kings and lords into a fight for Scotland itself, probably the very first instance of nationalism. This prolonged the conflict into a decades-long struggle (one can say it has resurfaced, only using democracy and referendums as vehicle now thankfully). The unique situation of the highly urbanised Flemings who revolted is also discussed, and Rosen convincingly paints the picture that they were such a problem for the French that all plans of an French invasion of England in support of the Scots were shelved (something I used to wonder about). So, although in the end Flanders was successfully assimilated by the French kingdom, they helped the Scots stay independent for centuries more, something that bears thinking about according to me.

There are quite a few negative things I can talk about this book. At times, the narrative jumps far too quickly among far too many topics, especially in the beginning. Such as: climate change, physics, ocean currents, Vikings, climate again, farming, England, the Norse, Greenland, marketing and finally climate again! It feels like you're reading a stream-of-conciousness rather than a book. This gave a jarring effect that the book wasn't edited enough, shocking considering most of Rosen's career before he took to writing was spent in editing. And considering that I thought these were flaws in his earlier works I've read, Rosen has clearly not altered his style. Pity. Because they can turn a truly well written, exceptional book into merely a good book. Also, his penchant for bizarre, patronizing, diversions continues. In a book about a 6th Century plague, he talked about the "Cambrian Explosion of life" a phenomena that occurred 500 million years ago which in no way adds to the narrative. Here he talks about fluid mechanics, battle at the Stamford Bridge and a sundry other things that suspiciously look like padding. Also there are many, many footnotes which add a few bon mots and interesting facts to the book, but otherwise take you out of the narrative (especially since they weren't hyperlinked properly in my e-ARC). Moreover, for a book that should be about famine, its spends most of its time on military history. While I personally don't have a problem with this since I enjoy a battle description nearly as much as the next guy, for people who picked this book up to learn just about the famine and its wider ramifications on Europe, they will be disappointed at the bulk of what they have to read.

Overall the Third Horseman was fun to read. Rosen's skill remains at combining many topics including history, economics and science and making a narrative out of the mash without giving it a stodgy, academic feel. He also writes for a lay-reader and you can pick this up knowing only enough about history from having watched Braveheart and the Vikings. A more tightly edited and dare I say it, more researched book would have made it immeasurably better.

Read from: 13-05-2014 to 17-05-2014; ARC kindle copy.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Full Disclosure: I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a review.

Review: The Tiger by John Vaillant

This may just be one of best things I read this year. Although the cover looks pretty kitschy and the blurb which describes it as a "true story" of a man-eating tiger in Russia makes us want to start out with a big pinch of salt, The Tiger by John Vaillant held me from the get go.

Vaillant has previously written for the New Yorker, National Geographic and Outside. This is his second book.

The Tiger is pretty hard to describe, it is non-fiction at it's best. First there is a harrowing account of a man-eating tiger that has killed a man in the Russian Far-East in the middle of winter in 1997. This is the late 90s Russia, and boy is it a mess. Everything is in short supply; and the problems are only compounded by the weather, the remoteness, and the Chinese right across the border who have an appetite for anything remotely tiger (or bear or leopard or sable, they aren't too picky, mind). The poor subsistence poachers who live here have to eke out a living in the taiga after their government-run logging company disappears overnight. One of the poachers unfortunately goes too far and robs a tiger of it's dinner (when it's not there). And the tiger comes looking for him.

Vaillant presents a nuanced tale of the post-perestroika Russia, and what it meant to these people. But it is not just that, he also manages to pack in a lot of information about early Russian explorers who first started settling in the Amur region (i.e. Russia's Pacific coast and it's hinterland) in the mid 19th Century. Interactions between "ethnic Russians" and the "natives" who called the snowy taiga as their home is superbly described. And it's not lost on Vaillant just how similar the American colonization of it's West and the Russian colonization of it's East were. Remarkably, even the native tribes here are culturally and genetically similar to the native American tribes, they just didn't cross the Bering Strait. But they faced the same problems: small pox, extraordinary racism, relocation and now of course crushing poverty. But since this is such an inhospitable land, they've managed to cling on unlike the Americans. We get to read a little bit about their myths and how they make their livelihood, and no surprises that the tiger dominates both of them.

The Amur tiger is the centre-piece of the book. (The author inserts once, a little tongue-in-cheek, that nobody would buy the book otherwise.) And Vaillant spends quite a bit of time discussing why. Just what is our fascination with tigers, and other similar large predators? These to me were some of the strongest discussions in the book. We read about our deep connections to predators, what it meant to our ancestral forebears to first walk the savannah with big, sharp-toothed animals stalking them. He recounts accounts by researchers watching baboons hide out in caves or trees after dark, did our ancestors do the same? Some humbling thoughts flit about: did we proudly start out as pack-hunters, well organized and large-brained or as simple scavengers who kept a wary eye out for the rightful owners of the meat we were making off with? Why do children instinctively know about predation without it being explained to them? (I can attest here, and I come from a vegetarian family). And what it means to make a living of the land, having a deep connection to both the animals and plants that live there. This may actually sound a lot like hocus-pocus and Vaillant knows that, so he inserts an account of two German scientists who ran away from South Africa to the Namib desert during WWII so that they wouldn't be incarcerated as enemies. These scientists, made a living on edge of the desert with various animals for two years. They weren't experienced field hands, but the sheer will to survive taught them how to track, set traps and make rudimentary weapons. They weren't comfortable by any means, but they lived. (This story really stuck with me, one of the survivors wrote a book: The Sheltering Desert which is on my TBR list now.) I think I'm convinced that we're equipped to live out there in the wild, but most of us have lost it (or never learned it). So when "tribals" say they can read stories in the sand or snow thanks to animal tracks, or read the wind, I've a lot of time for them.

The bulk of the book of course deals with the man-eater and it's unfortunate victims. There are short sketches of their lives, what their neighbours and friends thought of them. And just what turned the normally human-shy tiger into a man-eater? Was it just the theft of the meat, or did the first victim shoot and wound it? Was the first victim poaching tigers? (This was never satisfactorily explained.) I've grown up reading Jim Corbett and his shikar stories so this was something like an 'old wine in new bottle' feeling for me except that it was in Russia rather than India. We also read about the Amur tiger ecology and behaviour (when they don't turn man-eater that is). Then there are the people who should be guarding the tiger from poachers but are now tasked with killing the man-eater. These driven people were characters you will simply not forget. There is also the ecology of the "boreal jungle", animal behaviour and the Russo-China relations in this part of the world, and the epilogue that tells us what is happening in Amur tiger conservation now, all incredibly interesting and riveting stuff.

The Tiger is powerfully written, sometimes it is easy to forget you're reading non-fiction. Vaillant is a great stylist, you can hardly complain about the prose. And even though I was getting goosebumps reading about the man-eater prowling the wilderness at the dead of the night, I just couldn't put it down during the finale. 

There is something in our psyche that draws us to understand these animals and their victims, and if it doesn't draw you, well you're missing out on quite a bit. Highly recommended.

Read From: 27-08-2014 to 29-08-2014; ePub copy.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Review: Enemies by Tim Weiner

I rarely read American history. I've to confess, I like more of Ancient and Medieval history which rules American history out, but who doesn't like spies and the cloak and dagger world of espionage eh? 

Enemies is a history of 20th Century America I could say. I only knew the FBI as an elite law enforcement agency, but Enemies really opened my eyes to a wholly different FBI.

Tim Weiner is a New York Times journalist whose previous book is a Pulitzer Prize winning history of the CIA (and next on my list!). Enemies is written in a droll, sometimes witty fashion that keeps you gripped from page one.

Weiner recounts that the FBI has spent most of its century long career as the secret police for American Presidents. From the 1920s onwards, the FBI was tasked with handling and removing subversives, foreign spies and communists (to Hoover, they probably were all the same). And boy do J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI make it a mission for Armageddon. Other enemies came and went: anarchists, Nazis, Fascists, Latin American terrorists, homosexuals, Vietnam war dissenters, even civil rights activists; but Hoover was relentless. Weiner stresses that this is finally not a biography of Hoover, but till almost the end of the book, Hoover and the FBI are inseparable. There's more to Hoover than the cross-dressing, living-with-his-mother persona we all know thanks to Hollywood. Then of course, there's Watergate and 9/11. Like I said, it was a good history of America in the 20th Century.

At its heart, Enemies is a sobering account of the mixed record of the FBI. They had some real breakthroughs, especially in WWII when they cracked Japanese ciphers (they missed Pearl Harbour though), and destroyed the Nazi spy network in the US; they even had a mole in the highest networks of the Soviet politburo. But they have a terrible record otherwise in the Cold War, and other foreign policy related issues. Hoover also ran a criminal regime with warrant less wiretaps, burglaries and other black-bag jobs whenever it suited him. His defense to other Presidents was that FDR had granted these to him in perpetuity (I kid you not) and every time he had to testify to Congress, he would disconnect all wiretaps a week before and truthfully say the FBI wasn't running any. What was the most shocking aspect was that while Congress and the American public would have taken Hoover to the cleaners if these details were known then, but Bush Jr. and co. have actually legalized these and countless other rights-violations over their sham War on Terror in the 21st Century.

Enemies is excellently footnoted and Weiner's research is impeccable. I can't imagine the amount of time he must have spent trawling through declassified and official accounts and documents to find some nuggets hidden underneath. The style with which Weiner presents all this dry information is just superb, and at times you forget you are reading a history. Since he is depending quite a bit on declassified material, Enemies is top-heavy with most of the best bits occurring from the 1920s to 70s. You really get a fresh look at characters such as FDR, Truman, Lyndon Johnson and of course Hoover.

I'd happily recommend this book to anybody remotely interested in history, and this book I think is now all the more significant in the light of Snowden's revelations.

Read from: 07-07-2014 to 28-07-2014; hardcopy.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Review: The War of the Roses by Alison Weir

The War of the Roses was a straight-up political history of England during the civil war known as the War of the Roses in the 15th Century.

I'd not read anything by Alison Weir before but I know she's one of the most popular historians around. After finishing Schama's A History of Britain (Vol. 1), I decided to read more about the War of the Roses.

A few pages in, I realized why most histories give this war a wide berth (including Schama's). The esoteric genealogies and dynastic feuds can spin anyone's head. The book actually starts with Edward III, who reigned over England a good 150 years before the war! The sons of Edward III, and their descendants make up almost the factions in the Roses. Then there's John of Gaunt and his sons (bastards and all). Add to this, almost all the principal participants are named Edward, Richard, Henry and John! It all got so complicated, I even resorted to notes to keep everything straight.

Why did I bother reading this at all? Well, I've to confess, I've been hearing about Roses for quite a while now, all the more since I became a Game of Thrones buff and GRRM has acknowledged Roses as one of the main historical inspirations to create his fantasy saga. But, I've to confess the actual history wasn't that gripping. Sure, there were betrayals and brother fighting brother, but you're just not invested in any of the players. But call me crazy, but I get a certain thrill from knowing the exact order in which the Plantagenets succeeded one another, and without knowing about Roses, the order is hopelessly muddled. Now I know exactly what happened to Richard II, who Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) was descended from, and why Henry VI and Edward IV reigns' overlap. That's it then. 

The War of the Roses is only half the account of the history actually. It ended with Edward IV on the throne. His brother who was to become Richard III and his fight with Henry Tudor is only briefly touched upon. I gather Weir has written another book covering that part, I'm undecided if I should ever pick it up.

This book was clearly written by a popular historian. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it didn't quite grip me the way a well written history written by a professional historian does. Weir repeatedly stresses that although this was a civil war that dragged on for many decades, it didn't affect the common people as much as one would expect. This was mainly because all the battles were finally fought by small armies, and none for more than a day since supply and logistics were still very undeveloped military sciences. That also made this history pretty dull, not that more bloodshed would have, but that petty politicking got boring to read about and Weir doesn't have the skill to make it interesting. There was hardly any social or cultural commentary. There was some discussion on the money involved to finance armies and rent got from some provinces, but again, this is not of much use since this is 15th Century money we are talking about. More maps would've helped immeasurably (there were just 2, and one of them of France!) since all the shires and counties where the battles occurred made my eyes glaze over (as I'm sure it'll for any non-Briton).

To conclude, War of the Roses was a complete chronicle of the first half of the civil war, albeit told in a dull and a old fashioned sort of way. Pick it up only if you want to clear up who exactly succeeded Henry IV and how many times Richard 'Kingmaker' Neville, the Earl of Warwick changed sides. (Twice.)

Read from: 04-07-2014 to 02-08-2014; kindle copy.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

Review: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Ancillary Justice (AJ) is a great modern space opera. It also happens to be Ann Leckie's debut (she's won a bunch of awards for this book already).

The first half of AJ is split among two PoVs. Both PoVs happen to be the same "person": a starship's AI. One section is a flashback where the AI recounts how her ship ended up getting destroyed while the other, set in the present is a quest story dealing with only one segment, called an ancillary, of that AI. The segment, Breq, is on a quest to get a thingamajig that can enable her to exact revenge on the Lord of Radch, the Emperor type personality who rules the universe, who also destroyed Breq's ship.

The story is compelling from the get-go, you are curious to know just how Breq has ended up where she has, and also what she will make of it. The writing is crisp and although the middle of the book sags somewhat it is completely forgivable with regards to the exciting climax.

I loved the ideas that Leckie keeps throwing at us. The inherent instability of conquest-based empires which is what the Radch are, but they look at themselves as anything but. (The Radch have shades of Rome, Imperial China and of course Britain. There's also lots of tea drinking involved). The undead AI protagonist makes for a different look at humanity. The worldbuilding is great, and one gets the feeling that Leckie has only shown a glimpse of her fascinating universe, one she has thought out in great detail.

The thing that grabs at most readers though is gender. AJ uses the female pronoun throughout. The Radch don't have gendered pronouns in their language at all (and Leckie hints that her universe is not binary gendered). This makes for insightful and great reading when the gender of our characters is left ambiguous and even when we do get definite hints about their gender, Breq continues to use "she" because to her, that is default (actually, like most of SF, Breq doesn't actually think in English, but to our "translations", "she" has been handed down as default). 

AJ leaves its readers with a powerful message on how cultural traits and constructs, whether they be about gender, class or religion can constrict or define our thinking. All the praise it has garnered is fully deserved. Just about the only negative thing I can think about it is that AJ was maybe a 100 pages too long, and some of the dialogue was expository. But as it's only the first novel of what is sure to be an exciting series, I'll be eagerly waiting for more.

Read from: 06-04-2014 to 07-05-2014; kindle copy

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Review: A History of Britain (Vol.1) by Simon Schama

A History of Britain (HoB) is exactly what it says on the tin. But whoever said that was a bad thing.

Simon Schama is a British art historian who also specialises in Dutch and French history. So just why is he writing a trilogy of history books on Britain? (There's a debate whether he wrote the books and then the BBC produced a show on them or the other way around). But a few minutes into the book, you know exactly why he was roped in.

HoB is the kind of witty, exciting, yet extremely good history I always love reading. Although the time period tackled in this book is large, the book is so free wheeling and never with a dull moment.

Schama quickly zips through Celtic and Romano-Britain and although he's come under some criticism that he hasn't given these time periods their due, he brushes it under the carpet telling that these periods don't really deal with "Britain" but rather a hotch-potch of various English, Welsh and Scot/Pict states.

Saxon, Viking and Noman invasions all spice things up a bit and Schama spends quite a bit of time discussing what the people of that time may have thought of all the axe-wielding raiders/colonizers on the loose. Overwhelmingly, there is a feeling that Schama has taken on this task to re-look at how the history of Britain has been written until now by British historians with a Marxist bent of mind (who were themselves critically re-looking at 'Whig' history). The Vikings are a case in point. While early Marxist historians have somewhat brushed it aside telling Viking invasions didn't really change Britain all that much for the common man, Schama points out that no, the Viking invasions had far-reaching effects on people across all social and economic strata.

1066 is another of those that Schama spends considerable time with. It really was an "important date" in the history of Britain. Beckett and Henry II's Common Law are also given their due.

Complicated bits which involve entangled family trees and bitter dynastic feuding, such as the Anarchy and the War of the Roses, are just superficially touched. Although this was initially annoying since I wanted to know about these periods, I realized it's impossible to do justice to them without spending a great deal of time, plus here genuinely a case can be made that the political feuding didn't much affect the common people on the ground.

Predictably, a lot of time is spent on the Magna Carta and what it meant. And while it is well known that a bunch of Barons blackmailed the King into signing it, Schama argues that it had far reaching effects both in 1215 and in later British history. The English-Scot wars of Edward I are also covered in detail.

But there were some major grouses of mine here. Schama completely skips Richard the Lionheart's Crusade and campaigns in Europe and even the Hundred Year's War between the English and the French. Surely the French Wars at least merited some attention as it probably had an impact on both countries nascent nationalism. I can only hope the later volumes look outside of the British Isles, as I can't quite think of later British history without a Calcutta or a Boston.

The rise of the Tudors, the Reformation, the "Henries" and Elizabeth are very well discussed. I felt this was the strongest quarter of the book wonderfully merging cultural and political history. Read the book if you've to for this alone.

Overall a History of Britain is a page-turningly good history, and I think it achieves this by not compromising on any scholarly rigour. Erudite, witty and yet Schama never misses great insights that leave you amazed.

I listened to this as an audio book, and after listening to so many American accents it was a welcome change to listen to a British one. The narrator Steven Thorne does a wonderful job, and it always brought a smile on my face when he switched to Scot, Irish or cockney accents. I can't wait to dive into Volume 2.

Read from: 08-06-2014 to 26-06-2014; audiobook.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Review: Three Parts Dead by max Gladstone

 

 

This book blew me away! And it's hard to pin-point just why. But I think it's be fair to say what I liked most about the book is that it is smart.

A legal thriller meets urban fantasy, with a much larger epic world lurking in the background is how I'd describe Three Parts Dead if you'd press me. The characters are interesting, well-rounded, and with the kind of snarky personality that makes you want to sit-up and read more about them. The magic system is nicely thought out, (we see a glimpse of a stock exchange where they are trading on various gods' favours and energies!) but it is finally only a setting to an enthralling case of trying to resurrect a dead god. What more could I ask for.

The prose is vivid and the constant description of colours and shapes can take a little getting used to. The plot resolves itself wonderfully with the right amount of tension, and I just can't wait to get started on the remaining Craft Sequence books.

A note on the Cover Art: I read this on my kindle, and I've to say I'm a little wistful about not owning that gorgeous cover art. Really, why can't we have more of these?

 

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Review: In God's Path by Robert Hoyland

In God's Path by Robert Hoyland was an intriguing history of the Arab conquests after the death of Muhammad. Hoyland is currently the Professor of Islamic History at Oxford University. He has previously written on the histories of Islam, the Arabs and the Near East.

Hoyland sets out from the beginning to challenge the narrative that Islam was carried at a breakneck speed across the world on the backs of Arabian horses. This is evidently a one-sided version, and if not wrong, it certainly is heavily biased towards the victors i.e the Muslims. I thought he successfully achieved this by critically re-looking at sources from people living in the 7th Century, both Muslim and non-Muslim, (especially the latter since the bulk of sources from this time are chroniclers from Byzantium). Then he gives precedence to later writers and sources from the 8th-9th centuries onwards, but is still pretty picky about whom to trust and whom not to.

The book's main thrust is that it wasn't inevitable for Islam to be successful, or that it wasn't just zeal and God which propelled the conquerors. Like all good history, it's far more complex than that. Take for instance that just before the Prophet's birth in the early 7th Century, the then superpowers of Byzantium and Persia were locked in a struggle for the Middle East and were exhausted by the time the first Muslim soldiers tested these empires. There was also a devastating plague which swept across these regions which might have not struck core-Arab areas such as Mecca and Medina too hard.

Also consider that many Arab tribes had learnt quite a bit through association with both empires, whether it was administrative skill, siege technology or simply the power of propaganda and organization.

The book is mainly divided chronologically with periods such as pre-Islam, immediately post-Muhammad, and the wars between the Arabs and Byzantium (in Syria, Egypt and North Africa), and those between the Arabs and the Persians. Throughout, Hoyland stresses on credible sources and what might have actually happened in battles. Since much of our history, both Islamic history from the Middle Ages and modern history has stressed the victors' tale, Hoyland I think doesn't do too much of disservice by stressing on sources who might have been eye-witnesses or writing immediately after these battles. Therefore we get a picture not of one-sided victories but a jumble of victories, defeats and even stalemates between the Arabs and their various opponents. I read for the first time of how the Arabs lost to various hardy tribes such as the Khazars of the Caucasus, or the North African Berbers. Hoyland states repeatedly, that this wasn't just religion-fueled conquering but a complex relationship between conquerors, the conquered, local elites, tax-payers and governors.

Some of the most interesting sections were Arab interaction with the Persians and Central Asia. The Persian Sassanian Empire collapsed totally when fighting the Arabs, and the polities in Central Asia didn't fair much better. The melding here of Islam with the local culture (not to mention of the Arabs and locals), and it's distance from central Arabia played a pivotal part in how the Ummayad dynasty of caliphs was overthrown by the Abbasids, and how much of Islam came to Persianized.

Hoyland also de-stresses the importance payed to so-called pivotal battles like the Battle of Poitier/Tours (between the Arabs and the Franks) or the Battle of Talas (between Arabs and the Chinese Tang dynasty). These were on-off and really didn't much determine future events. Other factors such as Central Asia, Spain and North Africa becoming more or less independent from centralized Muslim rule were far more pivotal. The last few chapters wonderfully dealt with the Islamic civilization that was created by the melding of various cultures, yet how the Arabs remained important still (consider: Mecca is still the holy site for Muslims, or that Muslim children are still given Arabic names). Insights such as why there might have been a ban of images in Islamic art, or the widespread practice of alms-giving among Muslims were particularly delightful to read about.

Some things I can criticize about the book was that it was too short, and more details wouldn't have hurt at all. A short biography of Muhammad say, or the Arab civil wars that are only mentioned in passing. Hoyland also assumes the reader to be somewhat well versed in Arab history, quite a drawback in a book aimed at an interested yet layman reader. The time periods also jump around quite a bit such as we might move on to the 9th Century in Persia but then return to the 7th in Egypt. Otherwise, the book is written simply and in an engaging manner.

Overall the book is an eye-opening read of how one can approach early Islamic history. It is also a great example in how to evaluate historical sources. Highly recommended.

Read from: 24-08-2014 to 09-09-2014; ARC kindle copy
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
 

Full Disclosure: I was given a advanced reading copy of the book in exchange for a review by the publisher.