God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 Book

The story of the early spread of Islam is very interesting to me, and I was looking forward to reading this. However, David Levering Lewis, the author, seems to be more concerned with showing off his vocabulary and tossing out ridiculous analogies than he is with telling the story. It's a fascinating story that doesn't need fancy vocabulary and stupid analogies.

I forgave this:

"Yet, as much as the eudaemonia experienced in the hearing and the reading of its scriptures, as much even as the confidence-building of their clarity and rigor, the unique balm of Muhammad's message was that it lifted the Arabs out of an aged inferiority complex." (pg 56)

I even forgave this:

"It was then that the Arabian Peninsula disgorged an enormous portion of its people from Yemen to the perimeter of Mesopotamia: a demographic belch of historic volume." (84)

Got a little more impatient with these:

"The awe and adulation Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan's name once evoked were to be replaced by contumely and silence in almost equal portions." (93)

"Damascus, marvelously irrigated and arborescent, grew with the empire." - Arborescent, according to my dictionary, means "treelike". I think he meant "arboreous", which means surrounded by trees. (95)

"It was an ecumene in which [various goods from all over the place:] moved on camel backs and in ships' holds...." - I looked up "Ecumene" in the American Heritage dictionary, and couldn't find it. Dictionary.com didn't have it either. I don't know. (99)

Also impatient with the author's reminding us over and over and over again that he's giving CE (Common Era) dates. I get it. Please, just stop with the CE nonsense. If you suddenly switch to hijra dates, tell me. Otherwise, again, I get it!

Finally, had to abandon it entirely with one of the dumbest analogies ever (and I'm ignoring the part where he actually references Sherman's March in the American Civil War):

"Looming above Jerusalem like some divine Rubik's Cube, the Umayyad Dome of the Rock symbolized Islam as God's capstone." (100)

A Rubik's Cube? Are you friggin' kidding!?