Mr. Hourani, does the arab peoples a disservice by placing their origen at the 7th century. A rich and distant heritage should not be ignored. This book would be more aptly titled A History of the Islamic Faith. It is shallow and without the slightest color attributed to its cover. Mostly a long disertation on lineage of leadership. Difficult to get excited about.

First off let me say that going into this book I did not have a really good understanding of Arab or Muslim culture. Now that I'm done I feel like I got a really good basis with which to understand these cultures.

This book doesn't explain in-depth the rise and fall of specific governments and nations, but rather details and profiles the peoples that populated them. It dives into the religious and social development in the Muslim countries. At this point I feel like I need to read a lot more books on more specific histories.

My only real critique of this book is that it's hard to keep all of the terminology straight in my head (Thank goodness for Wikipedia). It was really easy to zone out to this audiobook. The way it was written made it hard to pick back up and figure out what had been going on.

Probably the biggest plus of this book is that it doesn't feel like it's written from a western perspective. I would highly recommend this book as a good dive-in immersion experience.

The reader does the best she can with the material, but it is as if she were reading a textbook. As far as the material is concerned, it presumes that the listener will be familiar with places and naming conventions based on a brief disclaimer in the preface. I really wanted to finish this book, but only got about half way through the second part of the three part download before giving up.

The book offers an admirable sweep of the Arab world's history. Slightly academic in style, and thus a little dense, but, nevertheless, well worth the listen. The text offers an overall positive outlook of the Arab peoples' accomplishments through the centuries - critics may argue: "respectable, but a little too positive." Judge for yourself.

The reader unfortunately matches the somber, dry and somewhat tedious and encyclopedic approach to the subject developed by the author. Nevertheless, the interesting and important subject and the scholarship of the author make the book worth listening to, at least until a better introduction to the subject comes along.