Can't Recommend A Purchase - Rated 
This book is published by the Cambridge University Press and is this promoted, implicitly at least given its title, as an authoritative reference work. It may have great merits as a work of political literature, but it is disappointing as a reference work of history, and it is a surprise to this reader that the Cambridge University Press has apparently lowered its editorial and professional standards so much. There are other works in the Cambridge Illustrated History series that easily meet the normal standards of such a reference work, for example the volume on China.
Two examples of the limitations of this book give a representative picture of its shortcomings. First, in the Introduction, the editor uses the term "heresy" to describe how "western eyes" view the attack of some muslims on the achievements of the Enlightenment. Much of the book seems to be a partisan argument defending one particular, and extreme, muslim doctrine against a particular, and also extreme, non-muslim viewpoint. Leaving aside the question of whether this approach suits a work that is positioned as an authoritative reference book, the choice of the term "heresy" here is unfortunate, and one feels prompted to wonder whether the term was picked deliberately to obscure the main point of the enlightenment, which was to move from revealed religion to rational or scientific exploration of questions where possible. This kind of confusion will happen in the choice of words occasionally in even the best writing, but it is pervasive in this book.
The second example is found a few pages later, in relation to women. The text states that the freedom enjoyed by women in the West has on the whole produced shock among muslim men, and that this freedom "led to moral degeneration." Had the text quoted these words -- " 'led to moral degeneration ' " -- to mean that either this view was stated by some muslim or that the editor takes it to represent an opinion, that could be acceptable in a reference work, but written as an assertion, i.e. a statement of fact or of the author's best impartial judgement, it moves the book from being a reliable reference work to being a polemic or worse.
It is hard to say whether the book's poor quality in many places is as a result of very low standards of editing and writing, or whether the book has a narrow and, one hopes, minority agenda. Some chapters are very good, but on the whole this is not the book that it claims to be, and the potential buyer's money is probably better saved for a different title. It is to be hoped that the management of the CUP will ensure a much better work in the next edition.
|
