The Scribner's Hovel

  Sword and Scimitar by Raymond Ibrahim is a fast read, but it is very light on the research that backs the text. It does make use of legitimate secondary scholastic sources, such as Islam and Dhimmitude by Bat Ye'or (good book, for those who want to know more about specific aspects of Islamic society), but it suffers from the very modern tendency to reduce the on-again, off-again struggle between Christendom and the Dar-al Islam (Realm of Islam) as one singular, endless war equivalent to the Cold War (which in fact is/was much closer to being a struggle between two powerful states and their supranational spheres of influence), and makes some glaring, if not intentional, fallacies in the general story of Christian-Muslim interactions.  A good enough map, but the parts conquered by Islamic polities in Eastern Europe are not totally accurate. For one thing, the Crimea and the Caucasus should be light gray, being territories once controlled by Islam but later seized by Christi...