Hmm, where to start on this one? This is my first read of a Jenkins work, although several others of his are on my reading list, so I am not sure how much my comments will relate to how he usually writes vs. this specific book. The content of this book is excellent but it is rather all over the place. Perhaps this is just due to the fact that anytime a historian attempts to write a book about such a large geographical area over such a long period of time, it is inevitable to be somewhat scattered and lack some coherence. Perhaps this book just needed a little bit longer in the editing process before it came out. Major kudos to him for writing about this subject matter. I would say this is really a must read for anyone who studies the middle east and a must read for Christians who care about the history of the church in the world.

Here are some specific examples of things that could have been better:

1.Why did he skip from about 1400 (when he argues quite cogently about the various factors that really crushed the old eastern churches) to the modern period? What about what happened in the time in between there? How did the Safavids and Mughals treat Christians? Ok, so you might say that this was out of the scope of his 1000 years, but then why did he spend such a large portion of the book talking about the modern period?

2.I really got his point about most Western Christians not knowing about the history of the Eastern churches very quickly. Now I know that I have studied some of this on my own, even some from primary documents, in grad school, so others would need more convincing than I would, but still, he kept reiterating his point over and over and over. The book (at least his opinion sections) could have been more concise overall really.

3. The structure of his book was not conducive to him making a consistent overarching argument about how/why this happened to the Eastern churches. For example, why does he spend so much time near the end of the book talking about the beginnings of Islam? If he was going for an overall argument about the nature of the complex relationship between Islam and Christianity fine, but talk about Islam earlier and make your argument flow more through your section on the history of the decline of the Eastern churches.

In conclusion, sometimes his attempt at doing a real history book that also appeals to non-specialists (or even general interest readers) is a major plus and sometimes it means he leaves some things out. All in all though, for a non-Middle Eastern historian, he really does get most things right. I have read many of the detailed secondary works which he uses and studied the particular history of Islam and the minority Christian and other faiths that survived under it, and I expected that I would have more quibbles with his positions or arguments. My quibbles are rather with his organization and lack of clarity.