An interesting book, viewing the history of the world from the other side of the giant gulf - from the Muslim viewpoint. I was struck by how much the religion has evolved (but, oddly, with each change touted as a return to its forgotten origins), much as Christianity has, and I now wonder if this is a standard course of any religion. He posited that the rise of the West had more to do with luck than anything else - that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment didn't happen in the Middle World simply because it was composed of stable and powerful empires at the time, and that they neither needed nor wanted the associated upheaval. Our collective recent history comes across as a series of hideous mistakes and miscalculations, with a trail of unintended consequences. But I wonder if anything we had done could have been acceptable, once the West gained mastery over the Muslim world.

One caveat. When the author discussed events, in the West, that I knew something about, I noticed a tendency to over-generalize and leave bits out. I assume that he was doing the same in the rest of the book. But then, how else could you conceivably fit a history of the world into a single volume?