Review: Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes

Destiny Disrupted has a simple goal: make a Islamocentric history edible for the Eurocentric, Western citizen. Ansary, having come from Afghanistan, tells how the mythos of Europe- Birth of Civilization, Rome, Dark Ages, Enlightenment- does not map onto the rest of the world, and how a similar but radically different story of history is told a few thousand more miles to the east.

It does this efficiently (the history is only around 350 pages) and it does it with "Big Picture" people in mind. If you're looking for the history of Yemen or Morocco, you will be dissappointed, but if you're trying to understand the historical mindset of regional powers, then Ansary delivers.

Whats also great about the book is how it isn't completely a geopolitical yarn: It talks about the lower classes, the middle class and the intellectual history of Muslim civilization without seeming like the boring social history you'd find in a textbook. In fact, that is one of the great things about this book- it has all the valuable information you'd expect in a textbook without the pages and pages of crap.

Like William Manchester's "A World Lit Only By Fire" is perfect primer for AP European History, Destiny Disrupted probably should be used in AP World History classes to implant upon students the ability to conceive of non-European histories and societies.