This was extremely interesting. I requested the book because I had read Polk in the past, and I was left glad that I read it. It was both informative and enjoyable.

This is a good way to work through the complicated history of Christian-Islam societies and relations, however it should be read as one book among many. As with anything, there are different opinions and perspectives as well as some ideas that are neglected by one author or another. The book is a fascinating read and should be included among those

Crusade and Jihad
The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North
By William R. Polk

Source Netgalley

Publication date 9th January 2018

Polk has reported from many global hotspots during the course of his career. This book is his attempt to begin to put the pieces together. He explores the relationship between the ‘Muslim East’ and the ‘Christian West’. From the Moguls to the modern day, it spans the Muslim/Arab world; from Africa to the ‘Middle East’, from China to Europe, and all stops in between. It looks at this history in order to explain the present day. Polk looks at the tensions that exist between ‘East and West’, analysing the horrors of colonialism and the seeds of today’s terrorism, The book explores the origins of many of today’s most active terrorist organisations. This is a long book, a hard read that may intimidate the casual reader, but it's worth the effort.


(this review has been. Cross posted on Goodreads and hopefully on amazon

An excellent and well researched book on the origins and course of the holy wars between christendom and the muslim world and how this conflict laid the foundations for the geopolitical map of the middle east and modern europe.

A lot of detail on a lot of history. There is bound to be something you don't know in this broadly scaled book. But it is not an easy read. And it does not always seem to be fully balanced. There is assuredly much to criticize in the record of what Polk calls "The North," but I found his criticisms to be a bit heavy-handed at times.

As a teacher of world history, I had some familiarity with much of the material covered here. This certainly added depth to what I know and I am not sorry to have read it. And even the perspective used can be helpful to counter the self-congratulatory tone (or at least an accepting tone) of many histories. But I would be very cautious in using it in the classroom

I was lucky enough to get a free copy via Netgalley for a true and honest opinion.

This was a interesting read and perfect for those historian buffs! It is a quite a heavy read and it took me ages to finally finish it.
This book starts from pre-Islaic period, then to start of Islam, focusing on Muhammad (PBUH) and all the way to our present time. As you can tell, that is A LOT of history to get through, considering how many countries, events, people the author has to go through.

I don't think this book is good for beginners but probably someone who has a sound understanding, as it does get a bit confusing.

Overall, it was good and I would recommend it.

This is an interesting book on an area of history that I did not know much about. It has a great deal of information, so I would recommend it only for older students who have some knowledge of world history and a high reading level.

William Polk gives a fascinating, and sometimes uncomfortable, insight into the major cultural, racial and religious origins of the wars between the North and Islam,

It is very well researched, and covers a massive amount of Islamic history in virtually all parts of the world. The book also alludes to the fact that most Muslims are not aligned or united in their chosen religion, Hence the dreadful bloodshed between the various Islamic sects. The various Colonial countries certainly exacerbated the various conflicts, but the book was not totally convincing that all the blame can be laid at the door of the North.

Polk clearly is a respected expert in his field, and gathers together a wide range of fascinating and disturbing historical events.

A better tittle for the book may be two hundred years of Western Imperialism in the Muslim. As such it is an effective but too long a book..

Particularly for us in the US, it is hard for us to imagine how much of the world Europe colonized. Much of the modern Middle East is a British creation. Egypt in the nineteenth century had been occupied by both the British and the French who looked down on the native population and were very brutal. The strongest part of this book deals with Western colonialism in the Middle East.
.
The book is too large. It should have just focused on the Middle East. Instead it deals the entire Muslim world which is very large and consists of many different cultures. I ended up skipping over the pages that dealt with Muslims in China and the Philippines. It seemed liked a subject matter for a different book.

Though the book is written in an academic style it is a relative easy read for a book written in this style. Many books written in an academic style are totally unappealing to a lay reader.

It is disappointing that the book does not go inter the full Thousand-year history of contact between the Muslim and Christian world. It still seems to matter to moderns. The author does go into Western Crusades which were very bloody. However, I thought the author did not discuss enough whether the Muslims would have invaded Europe if they could.

The book is written sympathetically towards the Muslims. It did provide me with a greater understanding of the Middle East. However, sometimes one wonders if the author does glosses over many of the internal difficulties of the modern Muslim world.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37900027-crusade-and-jihad" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North (The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series)" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1515562416m/37900027.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37900027-crusade-and-jihad">Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/129119.William_R_Polk">William R. Polk</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2276587016">4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
In this book Mr. Polk has crafted an overview of the interactions between to great civilization: the "North," including Europe, the US, and, to a degree China and Japan. The other civilization, the "South," in the context of this work is the broader Islamic world, stretching from Morocco and Nigeria to Xinjiang and the Philippines. His aim is to show the interactions between these to "peoples" on a global scale. While this approach could easily have turned into a series of generalizations, Polk is clear that these areas encompass a wide range of cultures. What Polk focuses on are interactions between various countries both within and without these regions.<br /><br />While Polk covers more or less the whole history of interaction between the North and South (Muhammad, the Ummayids, Abbasids, Fatimids, the Crusades, the Ottomans, etc) the real meat of the work is the colonial and post-colonial periods. He covers how the Europeans colonized, how their colonial subjects responded to imperialism, and the impact that said imperialism had on the post-colonial states and peoples. This is a very wide ranging book, covering such diverse topics as the Uiyghurs in China, the Dutch in Java, and Napolean in Egypt. For the most part Mr. Polk seems quite knowledgeable on these subjects. However, there are a few errors like referring to Sikhs as Hindus (he did rectify this error a couple hundred pages later) or referring to Peter the Her it's "People's Crusade" as the "Children's Crusade." Since I received an advance copy of this book through Netgalley these errors may have been corrected in the finished edition. While they did give me pause, they did little to distract from the overall narrative.<br /><br />Due to the nature of the work, covering a vast range of geography and time periods, there is a fair amount of jumping from one location or year to another locale in another century. These jumps generally fit the theme of that section of the book, and Mr. Polk is generally good at reminding the reader of who is doing what. There is a fair amount of repetition but this generally works in the book's favor, refreshing the reader's memory, or driving home a point.<br /><br />There is a fair amount of personal experience injected in this work. Mr. Polk has spent half a century either studying or engaging with the two regions and it shows in his work. He will periodically bring up a conversation he had with Nasser or an Algerian resistance leader, and these generally complement what he is discussing in that chapter. While this first hand experience could easily compromise the integrity of the work, he is quite clear when he is offering his personal views on a topic, frankly admitting that they are his own views. Whether one sees this as a detriment or benefit, I preferred the frank approach.<br /><br />All in all, this was a very enjoyable and informative work. In spite of some errors and the author seeping his own history in (at least in a more open fashion than many authors) the book does an excellent job at covering the multitude of interactions between the North and South, and how important understanding their history is to comprehending the modern world.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/38012094-hasso-von-moltke">View all my reviews</a>

This is strictly academic in both tone and content - so set aside quite some time to absorb the information to hand and be prepared to be in for the long haul.

Polk's book begins, quite naturally, with the advent of Islam, it development, its spread and its metamorphosis into its current, sometimes militaristic, form we see today. As Islam came into contact and conflict with the imperialistic powers of the West, Polk shows how this heavily impacted Muslim culture and society, and how hostility fermented over the ages. Polk doesn't confined himself to just the European field, but takes on a global view.

"A sobering, scrupulous, and frank account of imperialism, colonialism, insurgency, and terrorism ..."

First of all, I have not finished this book yet. I have read about 20% and that took me quite a long time. Although this is a fascinating book and I am very interested in reading it, I am finding it difficult to concentrate on it. I am really interested in the subject and I would want to finish reading this book in the future, perhaps buying a physical copy, to read bit by bit rather than all in one go.

Therefore I will not be doing a further review for now, but may do so in the future.

What I have read, I have found very interesting and educational. This is a very readable book on a complex subject. If you are interested in the subject, this would be a book worth picking up.

The subtitle of William Polk’s Crusade and Jihad really grabbed me: “The thousand-year war between the Muslim world and the Global North.” Maybe, I thought, THIS will help me understand the mess in the Middle East, the hatred of Muslims that is not only overt but seemingly encouraged under the current US Administration, and just the weirdness that surrounds religious conflict.

For starters, I am neither a Muslim nor a Christian, so I had not preconceived bias – but early on, I found myself thinking that a few very religious people I know would be reaching for the smelling salts by about the third page. The author’s extensive background (including roles as historian, policy planner, diplomat, peace negotiator, and businessman) and meticulous research are impressive, and the book is his attempt to “lay out in this book, as accurately as I could, what I think is actually so—not what we would like to be so…”

The book is extensively sourced and (be still, my librarian heart!) has an amazing index, so if there is a particular incident, individual, location, or other point of interest in the vast topic of Christian-Muslim history and relations, the reader can get right to it.

And, to be honest, by the time I was about 20% through the book, I had a flashback to 1968, when I was a history major in college, and became seriously depressed by my realization that history was just tales of who killed whom over and over, and that we were probably completely doomed – so I did what any disillusioned 19-year-old would do: I dropped out, got married, and read fiction for a few years. This book has MORE than enough detail for anyone with an interest in history, and I was woefully ignorant about MOST of what I learned while reading Crusade and Jihad. It’s not an easy read, but it is THOROUGH.

Although I had been a history major in college for a few years back in the 60’s, my retention was faulty enough that I only was vaguely aware of the history of Islam: I knew that after its beginning, Islam spread across North Africa into Europe, had a caliphate in medieval Spain, and was actually the “bright light in a European Dark Age.” But there was so much I didn’t know, and I had such huge gaps in awareness of the thousand years of battle. Polk labels the opposing sides as the “Global North and South,” and his book includes everything: Russian’s wars in the Caucasian Mountains, the Moro Rebellion, French rule in Algeria, the creation and rise of Hezbollah, and more, right up to Boko Haram, the Islamic State, the Taliban, and the ongoing disaster in Afghanistan.

Despite having spread throughout the Middle East, Africa, and into Southeast Asia, Islamic civilization (the Global South) began a decline at he same time that Europe (the Global North) began its overseas expansion. The Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Russians all participated in the defeat of Muslims, leading the conquered people to go so far as to try embracing Western concepts of dress, ideas, and armies. Then the 19th Century was basically a century-long assault of Muslims – from what seems like all sides. And finally we get to more recent history, where things have just totally convulsed in too many ways (for me) to comprehend.

TBH, it was too much for me, and while I really wanted to know more, perhaps not THIS much more. At the end of the book, what really had an impact was Polk’s frank discussion of the blindness many of us experience as we struggle to understand the hatred on both sides. One line really resonated with me: “An American newspaper editor once said that a dogfight on Main Street is more important than a war in a distant country.” America First, indeed. Very sad.

I suggested to a friend that they read the first 15-20% than move to the summary chapters, and skim the index to find any specific areas of interest. I don’t know many people who could really deal with the density and detail in this book.

But it is awesome, and I appreciate the opportunity to read this incredible book — thanks to Yale University Press and NetGalley – in exchange for my honest review. Five huge stars.



Author Littoral Librarian
Posted on January 30, 2018

Polk has created a work that is nothing short of impressive. It’s exhaustive in its reach and comprehensive in its individual coverage of every clash and struggle between what he labels the Global North and South, including everything from Russian’s wars in the Caucasian Mountains, French rule in Algeria, the Moro Rebellion, the creation and rise of Hezbollah, all the way up to Boko Haram and the Islamic State. In short, if it’s something that can possibly viewed under the umbrella of the clash between any part of the Islamic World and the various imperial powers (Europe, Russia, China, the US) that have tried to impose upon it, it can be found here.

The author has years upon years of experience with the Muslim world and a multitude of achievements attached to his work there, and it shows in the best way imaginable. Despite the enormous breadth of information encompassed in this book, never ever once did I feel anything close to swamped by it all. Its organization and the clarity of writing prevented any sensation of knowledge inundation, and kept me intellectually enraptured on a journey across the globe and through the centuries.

It is of this reader’s opinion that “Crusade and Jihad” deserves to be the new go-to reference resource for anyone who looks upon any of the tensions, malaise, tyrannical regimes, chaos or fighting that can be found across the Muslim world and wonders how it all got to this point. Polk provides the perfect background guide to all of those who wish to break out of their shell of comfort and complacency and understand more about the longstanding confrontation between Global North and Global South.