Recommended reading

Anyone got some good non-fiction for the literate anon?

(And of course, by "literate", I mean "capable of reading more than two trolls and a flame before needing a fap-break)

(Oh, and in b4 "What, intelligent life in 4chan? You kidding?")


My 2 cents: "The Crusades through Arab eyes" by Amin Maalouf.

Relevance for the modern anon:
- whatever they say on Fox et al, history did NOT start 5 seconds ago. For starters, the "war on terror" has elements stretching back centuries
- the Crusaders lost for a number of reasons. Among them were inflexible military thinking and underestimating a unified enemy (in b4 "hurr durr america > all")

Much interesting to learn, like:
- back then, the Moslems were keen on education and learning, while the Christians were largely superstitious, illiterate thugs
- the Crusades started well for the Crusaders, cos Moslems couldn't stand together (at least at first)
- nor could the Crusaders (both sides were many nations, never one), this being the third main reason they were eventually beaten back
- the Moslem world was so traumatised by the Crusades that their culture went into a stagnation that they're still struggling with

OK, the tl;dr lamp is blinking. Next!

>>9
You seem to blow many small factors out of proportion, succession crisis are usually just a focal point in time for frictions in society rather than being entirely caused by the process of succession itself, though I agree that instability was a major cause of the stagnation of the Islamic world.