Best of a Breed

The Multiple Identities of the Middle East, by Bernard Lewis (Schocken, 176 pp., $21)

Bernard Lewis is today the doyen of historians of the Middle East. In this age of specialists and area studies, of sociological models, of prose dangling dead on the barbed wire of jargon, he seems like a survivor from the past, when scholarship was accessible to the general reader. His sentences are simple but lapidary. Familiar with the major languages and literatures of the Middle East, he knows most of those of Europe as well. The thoroughness of his footnotes is matched only by their linguistic range. For him, as for the other great historians, the facts must be right and then understanding will follow.

About the Author

David Pryce-Jones

David Pryce-Jones (1936–2025) was a British author and commentator and served as a senior editor of National Review.

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The Multiple Identities of the Middle East, by Bernard Lewis (Schocken, 176 pp., $21)

Bernard Lewis is today the doyen of historians of the Middle East. In this age of specialists and area studies, of sociological models, of prose dangling dead on the barbed wire of jargon, he seems like a survivor from the past, when scholarship was accessible to the general reader. His sentences are simple but lapidary. Familiar with the major languages and literatures of the Middle East, he knows most of those of Europe as well. The thoroughness of his footnotes is matched only by their linguistic range. For him, as for the other great historians, the facts must be right and then understanding will follow.