Reviews
History on Display: The Horse
Now and then you stumble across history when you least expect it. Yesterday my friend Nancy and I visited Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. Sometimes you visit a museum because there’s an exhibit you want to see. Other times you visit a museum because you want to hang out, talk, laugh a little . …
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If You Only Read One Book on Islamic History…
I’ve been studying Islamic history for a long time now. (Stops to count on her fingers. Thirty years?? Really?? Counts again. Dang. ) Last year I discovered the best general book on Islamic history I’ve ever read: Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tanim Ansary. I underlined as I read. …
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Sylvester II: Scientist, Pope, Wizard, –Vampire?
Gerbert of Aurilac (ca. 940-1003), later Pope Sylvester II, has been tracking me down for months. I first met up with the “scientist-pope” when I was working on Islamic Spain’s influence on medieval Europe. Gerbert was one of the first of the European scholars who traveled to Spain to study the lost quadrivium of the…
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