What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis - 2003

New York: HarperCollins / Perennial, 2003. Trade Paperback. New. Pristine inside and out. Not a remainder. Not damaged. 186 pages.

For 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 was seen as an outer darkness of barbarism and unbelief from which there was nothing to learn or to fear. And then everything changed. The West won victory after victory, first on the battlefield and then in the marketplace. This volume examines the anguished reaction of the Islamic world as it tried to make sense of how it had been overtaken, overshadowed, and dominated by the West. In a fascinating portrait of a culture in turmoil, it shows how the Middle East turned its attention to understanding European weaponry, industry, government, education, and culture and how some Middle Easterners fastened blame on a series of scapegoats, while others asked not "Who did this to us?" but rather "Where did we go wrong?"