Where Westerners Can See The Islamic World Through Their Eyes

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansary
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4 stars. This is a very good, very useful book of history.

I'm a little disappointed it isn't quite the book I thought it was. But that's sorta my mistake, because it does what it sets out to do.

Lemme explain.

This is, essentially, a history not just of the Islamic world, but a history of that region from the perspective of the Islamic world. That's great. That's most of what I hoped for. The author, as a highly educated man originally from Afghanistan who lives in the US, is a knowledgeable historian and excellent communicator, and the book succeeds as a history for Westerners from another perspective. The concluding chapters, with the history of the last 100 years or so, is especially well done, filling in information I didn't get from other books of this type.

I just thought from the title and the blurb that it would focus on the part that really perplexes me--how, following the Medieval period, did the most advanced, most civilized part of the world, with the biggest cities and the greatest wealth, fall off so much that modern Europeans and Americans (during the 19th and 20th century, for example) could look that direction and think that *they* were uncivilized? What happened to the poets and the scholars and the scientists? The doctors? The explorers? Why wasn't the stuff that ended up giving the West such an advantage over the last 150 years or so invented and built in Egypt or Iraq or Persia instead of England and Germany and the US?

It's not totally missing from the book. Some of that is answered, more or less directly, but it's brief. I was hoping for a much closer look at the Medieval era and the changing fortunes of the West and the Islamic world. So it's in there, but as this really is a survey of history from the 600s to the present (with a short chapter on much earlier history) there isn't a lot of room to focus on what I thought was the central idea of the work.

To be clear, then: this is an excellent history of the Islamic world, told in a clear voice by a knowledgeable educator with lots of helpful, unique insight. I found it very informative. However, IMO, the main title--"Destiny Disrupted"--refers only to a small part of the whole, one of many themes, while the subtitle--"A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes"--is much more accurate in terms of content.

If that's what you want, you absolutely should read this book.

If you were hoping for something different like I was... you still should probably read it, and just be slightly disappointed, because it's still pretty good.

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Where I Look For a Call To Action

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a useful and necessary book that I wanted to read for a long time. It lays out the way in which the plutocrats (and those who work with them and on their foundations) use beneficial investing and direct giving to help alleviate suffering around the world, thereby looking benevolent and inoculating themselves against criticism of their other activities.

I enjoyed it and learned a great deal about a world I am completely separate from, but I wish the argument and its ramifications had been made more forcefully. Some of the major ideas are stated pretty directly, but others have to be interpreted, and I found myself working hard to make some of those connections. We see that it's dishonest for a billionaire (for example) to take credit for relatively small donations while racking up huge economic wins at the expense of others--though what exactly that entails is mostly left up to the reader to imagine. I guess we kinda know, but I would have preferred more clarity. We see via numerous anecdotes that bright, idealistic young people head for some of the most progressive arms of finance hoping to make a difference--being told they would make a difference--without seeing the benefits they hoped for. They often just ended up rich, distracted from their original goals, and a little embarrassed. They begin to see that the market dream of win-win--"we continue investing and making money and you, small person, get a little bit of benefit"--is mostly a scam used to cover up corporate greed. But the reader may wonder what they should have done. What did they do wrong? The clearest answer to that seems to be "They (and their companies) should fix the harm they are doing first."

I agree with that. Again, the exact harm isn't spelled out (except in general terms, like inequality and pollution), but the difficulties in combating it are. Many are quoted as basically saying that capitalism and the market are just too big for any person or handful of people to make a dent in, so they just do what they can within the system.

I get it. All these foundations, all of these supporters of the Clinton Global Initiative, all these TED talkers and philanthropists, add up to a shiny bauble used to distract the public, or perhaps a narcotic that numbs us and keeps us from taking action against the plutocrats who continue to impoverish the world and destroy the environment. The problem is that we can't blame the criminals for being criminals. You can't say that they should be nicer. They won't. Evil deed-doers gonna do evil deeds. (Or as the author says elsewhere, plutes gonna plute.) So instead we have to get mad at those who might know better, those in charge investing foundation money in young female entrepreneurs in Africa or something, and hold them to account for being part of a sleight of hand.

But other than that--I don't get what we're supposed to do. That's the part of the argument I'm missing.

Lots to chew on. I shoulda read this with a group or something.

Anyway, recommended. Take notes.

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