Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires

This is a cloth-bound hardcover, arriving in a suitable dust jacket. This is not a cheap case-bound hardcover.

A must read for a student of religion and history.

Incredibly researched honest look at Arab history that gives Arabic civilization its due without PC efforts to exaggerate the nobility of people who were flawed like us all. Arab nationalists, Islamic extremists and western xenophobes would probably object to some of the content. For example, Islamists won't want to hear about the corruption and political scheming of Arab conquerors in the early centuries of Islam and the pre-Islamic roots of much of Arabic culture. As the book points out, Arab school children are taught that spreading religion was the main goal of conquests that really began as "super raids" in search of booty, in several senses of the word. The book emphasizes how the Arabic language created Arab identity through the centuries and how its calcification by grammarians in the Middle Ages accounts for much of what ails that culture even today, from religious extremism to a fear of modernity.

In italiano costa decisamente troppo. L’edizione inglese ha un prezzo accettabile

Very thorough and well-researched history of the Arab peoples, especially prior to Islam