Book report: In the Shadow of the Sword

As I mentioned in my post On buying books at full price, a few weeks ago, I acquired a copy of Tom Holland's In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, and was having fun with it.

It continued to be great fun, all the way through. I recommend it highly. But not casual fun, I would say, so be ready.

An earlier book of his, Persian Fire, for example, was a coherent, dramatic story, about the attempted Persian conquest of Greece, and the failure of that...