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  • This is a gripping drama that pulls the reader into great, seminal events of world history, and a book which offers a wealth of knowledge and insight to any reader who wants to understand the movements and events behind the modern-day hostilities wracking Western and Islamic societies. We in the west share a common narrative of world history that runs from the Nile Valley and Mesopotomia, through Greece and Rome and the French Revolution, to the rise of the secular state and the triumph of democracy. But our story largely omits a whole civilisation that until quite recently saw itself at the centre of world history, and whose citizens shared an entirely different narrative for a thousand years. In "Destiny Disrupted", Tamim Ansary tells the rich story of world history as the Islamic world saw it, from the time of Mohammed to the fall of the Ottoman Empire to 9/11, introducing the people, events, empires, legends, religious disputes, and key turning points not only in terms of what happened, but in terms of how what happened was understood and interpreted. He clarifies why our civilisations grew up oblivious to each other, what happened when they intersected, and how the Islamic world was affected by its slow recognition that Europe-a place it long perceived as primitive and disorganised-had somehow hijacked destiny. With storytelling brio and evenhanded sympathy to all sides of the story, Ansary clarifies how the Muslim world, sees the history of the world, and what they therefore make of our own version of events. By enlightening western readers to that parallel 'other' narrative to the chapter we are living in today, "Disrupted Destiny" offers a vital perspective on the world conflicts many now find so puzzling.