Category: Islam

July 30, 2025

Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes *** (of 4)

Istanbul, the city, sits at the junction of Europe and Asia, literally and metaphorically. Istanbul, the book, moved my perception of history eastward, away from an inevitable march toward western cultural hegemony. As Americans, our history often begins with ancient Greece and its democratic ideals. Yet, ancient Greece is adjacent to modern Turkiye. Greeks inhabited […]

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January 2, 2024

Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah **** (of 4)

Gurnah won the 2022 Nobel Prize for literature and it is evident why in Afterlives, a vision of life on the ground in East Africa...

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October 24, 2022

Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar **** (of 4)

The title says the book is a novel, but the voice is the author’s and the story is about his life. News events, timelines, and...

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March 25, 2016

Black Flags by Joby Warrick *** (of 4)

Sadly, so much of the terror that has become ISIS in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the countries of North Africa and the attacks in Europe are a...

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March 9, 2014

In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh *** (of 4)

Ghosh recounts the life of a Medieval Jewish trader, Ben Yiyu, who transported goods by ship from India to Egypt. Evidence of his trader emerge...

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April 21, 2013

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson ** (of 4)

A computer hacker living in an unnamed Arab country with enough liberties to allow full internet access crosses the secret police who are monitoring his...

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April 17, 2012

Habibi by Craig Thompson **** (of 4)

Girl meets boy. Girl loses boy. Girl and boy are reunited, but with issues. That part seems straightforward enough, but this telling of the simultaneously...

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January 20, 2012

Ghost Wars by Steve Coll **** (of 4)

This book changed the way I viewed the CIA. I used to believe they were ideologically driven bumblers, but after observing the careful exhibition of...

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July 15, 2011

The Woman Who Fell from the Sky by Jennifer Steil * (of 4)

If a book is this bad I ordinarily just leave it off my list, but this one deserves to be panned, partly because it received...

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November 23, 2010

The Tenth Parallel by Eliza Griswold ** (of 4)

Griswold travels the around the globe hanging out approximately 10 degrees north of the equator. In Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines it’s...

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