Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian

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Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian Pub. Date: 5/10/2012 Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

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Overview

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of What Went Wrong? tells the story of his extraordinary life

After September 11, Americans who had never given much thought to the Middle East turned to Bernard Lewis for an explanation, catapulting What Went Wrong? and later Crisis of Islam to become number one bestsellers. He was the first to warn of a coming "clash of civilizations," a term he coined in 1957, and has led an amazing life, as much a political actor as a scholar of the Middle East. In this witty memoir he reflects on the events that have transformed the region since World War II, up through the Arab Spring.

A pathbreaking scholar with command of a dozen languages, Lewis has advised American presidents and dined with politicians from the shah of Iran to the pope. Over the years, he had tea at Buckingham Palace, befriended Golda Meir, and briefed politicians from Ted Kennedy to Dick Cheney. No stranger to controversy, he pulls no punches in his blunt criticism of those who see him as the intellectual progenitor of the Iraq war. Like America’s other great historian-statesmen Arthur Schlesinger and Henry Kissinger, he is a figure of towering intellect and a world-class raconteur, which makes Notes on a Century essential reading for anyone who cares about the fate of the Middle East.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Lewis, the 95-year-old dean of Middle Eastern studies, has never been one to back down from a fight. The Princeton professor has been lionized for his great erudition and savaged for what critics see as profoundly simplistic and solipsistic commentary on modern events and for adhering to outdated methods and assumptions. Now he revisits forgotten grievances, settles old scores, and spins yarns of his war years as one would with one’s grandchildren. Suffused with a possibly ironic superciliousness (he talks of how his grandfather “begat” his progeny), his memoir seems to lack all sense of proportion, casting equally polemical and venomous brickbats at the student who consulted him but didn’t include him in his acknowledgments as at the French court that fined him for casting doubt on the Armenian genocide, at the time a major international incident. He says he was displeased with the invasion of Iraq, thinking that Iran would have been the more appropriate target. An intellectual of Lewis’s stature can, at this stage of his life, be forgiven for publishing such a confused, meandering, and self-serving account of his own career, but it is not clear why anyone should want to read it. Agent: Peter Bernstein, Peter Bernstein Literary. (May)

Library Journal

As he approaches age 96, Lewis (emeritus, Near Eastern studies, Princeton Univ.; What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East) looks back at his achievements as a founder of the discipline of Islamic history, a prodigious scholar and writer, and a tireless traveler who forged relationships with scholars and government leaders all over the world. Well after his 1986 retirement from Princeton, he continued to write and lecture, becoming more outspoken in addressing the cultural clash between the West and the Islamic world and the threat from militant Islam, but he never lost his commitment to thorough investigation and careful exposition of his views. Here, he conveys the intellectual curiosity and power that has enabled him to transmit to both academics and general readers an understanding of the development of Islam as a faith and a culture along with the rise and decline of Islamic political power. With scholarly rigor and graceful, witty prose, he also offers insights about the nature of history, cultural identity, and literary values. VERDICT This memoir by an intellectual committed to a relentless search for historical understanding of a complex society is highly recommended for both specialists and interested general readers.[See Prepub Alert, 11/21/11.]—Elizabeth R. Hayford, formerly with Associated Coll. of the Midwest, Evanston, IL

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Kirkus Reviews

One of the first Orientalists in Britain shares his long historical trajectory, from London to the Middle East to Princeton. Lewis (Eastern Studies Emeritus/Princeton Univ.; The End of Modern History in the Middle East, 2011, etc.) was born in 1916 and is still astoundingly prolific and relevant, as demonstrated in recent bestsellers What Went Wrong? (2002) and The Crisis of Islam (2004). In episodic, wittily composed chapters, he addresses salient events in his career as a historian of the Near and Middle East--e.g., the process of learning numerous difficult languages and formative influences such as being born a nonreligious Jew in London. Enamored early on with exotic languages, he taught himself Italian and Hebrew, then at the University of London (his father wouldn't let his only child go to Oxford because "it was just a place where students spent all their time drinking and partying") he entered the relatively untried field of Oriental Studies and tackled Arabic. In this prewar era, his teachers followed a philological, textual approach, rather than historical. When he chose "the Eastern Question" in terms of the Ottoman Empire, he was encouraged to study the British, French, German and Russian documents, but not the Turkish. After the war, which Lewis spent with British intelligence doing decoding and translating work, he headed for Istanbul, determined to delve into the Ottoman archives, and emerged with an important early work, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961). In a lifelong pursuit of an unbiased and accurate historical method, he has often served as a kind of cultural diplomat, lecturing in America and translating for dignitaries, and he urges the guarding of one's "scholarly impartiality" and against prejudice. He writes frankly of his long tenure at Princeton, the dicey Israel-Palestinian crisis, the eclipse of secularism in the Muslim world and the "dangerous trend…of intellectual protectionism" advocated by Edward Said et al. Thoughtful, outspoken words from a sage who has lived his share of history.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780670023530
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Publication date: 5/10/2012
Pages: 400
Sales rank: 62,300
Product dimensions: 6.40 (w) x 9.04 (h) x 1.33 (d)

Meet the Author

Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University, the author of many books, and is internationally recognized as the greatest historian of the Middle East.

Buntzie Ellis Churchill served for twenty-three years as president of the World Affairs Council of Philadephia and for a decade hosted the daily radio show World Views.

1. Hometown:
  
  Princeton, New Jersey
1. Date of Birth:
  
  May 31, 1916
2. Place of Birth:
  
  London, England
1. Education:
  
  B.A., University of London, 1936; Diplome des Etudes Semitiques, University of Paris, 1937; Ph.D., University of London,

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