The Ornament of the World

How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain

By: Maria Rosa Menocal, Harold Bloom - foreword

Narrated by: Tanya Eby

Widely hailed as a revelation of a "lost" golden age, this history brings to vivid life the rich and thriving culture of medieval Spain, where, for more than seven centuries, Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance, and literature, science, and the arts flourished.

©2002 María Rosa Menocal (P)2017 Tantor

Barely comprehensible

The reader mumbles, mispronounces words, and stresses odd ones, in random patterns of intonation. Hopeless; I threw in the towel.

She pronounces it Izlum.

The narrator pronounces Islam as Izlum. It’s grating and unfortunately every fourth word in the book. Story is actually kinda boring too.

Excellent Book

Excellent book that reinforces my conviction that people of all faiths should have extraordinary tolerance for others to create and maintain superior societies.

Needs to be rewritten

The book contains good historical information. However it needs to be streamed and reorganised based on historical time with clear objectives. As is it hard to fellow.

Most relevant to today’s global state of affairs.

I learned quite a bit about the long history of the Iberian Peninsula, Northern Africa & Europe during Roman, Visigothic & Al-Andalus & impacts on religions, culture & conflict. I don’t think the term tolerance can be applied broadly to the interplay of the 3 monotheistic religions & societies. Also, I think the performance by the narrator could have been much better had she done a bit of research on better/more accurate & consistent pronunciations of Spanish words, names & terms.