This book is a little gem, an elegant marriage of good writing and elaborate, illuminating research, constantly enlivened by Ansary’s sharp eye for observation. Some passages slant toward ambivalence, as though the author is doing his task with a combination of affection and disillusionment, rendering the effort the more credible. Presenting history from a “different perspective” takes guts and a profound understanding of both versions, ours and theirs. A book like this can easily fail, become a cliché, but this, apart from the writing itself, which is done with unassuming brilliance tinged with a healthy does of cynicism (Vonnegut comes to mind), succeeds on multiple levels:

1. It is a shrewd and sparkling look at the political-social-cultural aspects of a religion mostly misunderstood.
2. It illuminates the broad historical context in which Islamic civilizations rose and fell–and does so in a few scant pages.
3. In extremely perilous times, when we are being groped every time we board a plane, where our civil liberties are being ravaged in the name of some greater good, and where, on the other hand, some of us–me, included–wake up certain morning with the images of people holding hands, jumping out of the infernal towers, this is a voice of moderation. Not a solution. But a glimpse of understanding. Some form of a foundation.

This is democracy. Our right to express ourselves. This is not being sent to the Ninth Circle of Hell for an anti-Stalin joke. What rubs me the wrong is the question of decency—no comment needed here, I assume—and the question of accuracy. Obama won a Noble Peace Prize; the other Mustachioed Mann sent a few million to the ovens. Imagine relations or survivors of that nightmare walking past the picture of the first African-American president dolled up as the Fuhrer….