Notes on a Century

March 12, 2012
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savaged for what critics see as profoundly simplistic and solipsistic commentary on modern events and for adhering to outdated methods and assumptions.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.

March 15, 2012
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.

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Starred review from May 15, 2012

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

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2012
When the topic is the Middle East, Lewis sees much to deplore in the newsroom and the lecture hall. But then Lewis' understanding reflects more than the usual journalism or scholarship. As a British intelligence officer, a multilingual translator of Middle Eastern poetry, and a tireless traveler through remote regions, Lewis has actually participated in developments shaping the Middle East. He learned of longstanding Arab-Kurdish tensions while in British uniform in Baghdad during WWII and then witnessed up close the postwar transformations that changed the context for these and other tensions in Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Israel. In the 1970s, he interviewed the shah and was in direct conversation with Sadat's advisors in Egypt and with Dayan himself in Israel. Yet in examining the complexities of the region, Lewis has provoked controversy. Here, with coauthor Churchill, he answers the allegations leveled at him by Armenian activists (angry at Lewis' refusal to equate the Turkish slaughter of their people in 1915 with the Holocaust), by theorist Edward Said and his academic allies (incensed at Lewis' alleged justification of Western imperialism in Islamic lands), and by critics of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq (convinced that Lewis advocated in favor of that invasion). A much-needed corrective to journalistic superficiality and academic ideology.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)