I had hoped for an accessible text exploring the idea of empire as a universal enemy to humankind through the lens of jihad. Instead, I got a dense history of the Bosnian civil war written in stiff and unreadable academese. (I swear, if I never read the word "peregrinations" again it will be too soon.) Maybe the book eventually gets where I thought it was going, but I couldn't justify punishing myself further, and I abandoned the read after getting a third of the way through. Why any person would think it a good idea to write this way is beyond me. Might as well have a disclaimer on the front of this book: "Not for laypersons."