Bernard Lewis is the West's greatest historian and interpreter of the Near East. Books such
as The Middle East and The Arabs in History are required reading for anybody who hopes to
understand the region and its people. Now Lewis offers What Went Wrong?, a concise and
timely survey of how Islamic civilization fell from worldwide leadership in almost every
frontier of human knowledge five or six centuries ago to a "poor, weak, and ignorant"
backwater that is today dominated by "shabby tyrannies ... modern only in their apparatus
of repression and terror." He offers no easy answers, but does provide an engaging chronicle
of the Arab encounter with Europe in all its military, economic, and cultural dimensions.
The most dramatic reversal, he says, may have occurred in the sciences: "Those who had been
disciples now became teachers; those who had been masters became pupils, often reluctant and
resentful pupils." Today's Arab governments have blamed their plight on any number of external
culprits, from Western imperialism to the Jews. Lewis believes they must instead commit to
putting their own houses in order: "If the peoples of Middle East continue on their present
path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will be no
escape from a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, [and] poverty and
oppression." Anybody who wants to understand the historical backdrop to September 11 would do
well to look for it on these pages. --John Miller

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