EBOOK What Went Wrong?:Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response

For many centuries, the world of Islam was in the forefront of human        achievement--the foremost military and economic power in the world, the leader in        the arts and sciences of civilization. Christian Europe, a remote land beyond its        northwestern frontier, was seen as an outer darkness of barbarism and unbelief from        which there was nothing to learn or to fear. And then everything changed, as the        previously despised West won victory after victory, first in the battlefield and the        marketplace, then in almost every aspect of public and even private life.In this        intriguing volume, Bernard Lewis examines the anguished reaction of the Islamic        world as it tried to understand why things had changed--how they had been overtaken,        overshadowed, and to an increasing extent dominated by the West. Lewis provides a        fascinating portrait of a culture in turmoil. He shows how the Middle East turned        its attention to understanding European weaponry and military tactics, commerce and        industry, government and diplomacy, education and culture. Lewis highlights the        striking differences between the Western and Middle Eastern cultures from the 18th        to the 20th centuries through thought-provoking comparisons of such things as        Christianity and Islam, music and the arts, the position of women, secularism and        the civil society, the clock and the calendar.Hailed in The New York Times Book        Review as "e;the doyen of Middle Eastern studies,"e; Bernard Lewis is one of the West's        foremost authorities on Islamic history and culture. In this striking volume, he        offers an incisive look at the historical relationship between the Middle East and        Europe.