A review by iread2much
In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire by Tom Holland

2.0

I bailed on this, the writing is very good, but the author makes a lot of statements that he didn't back up with any evidence, and I don't think good non-fiction books make such sweeping statements without a lot of evidence. I read more of this book than I normally for a book that didn't provide enough citations just because the writing was so well done. I wanted to keep reading it, but even when I tried to look at his notes and bibliography, I didn't see anything that justified what some of his statements were. As an example, claiming that the Christian mind is "hard wired" to question the literal nature of the Bible (meaning that it's acknowledged that it was written not by God, Christ, and/or his apostles) seems outrageous not just because I live in the USA where fundamentalism is prevalent, but also because I'm pretty sure that there is a LOT of ink on this very critical topic to the authors point that goes back for hundreds of years. I'm not a biblical scholar, so maybe he's right, but the author really needs to provide me with lots of citations to back a statement like that up. I will have to look elsewhere for a history of this region.
The lovely writing is why this gets 2 stars. I wish I could finish it because the writing is so good, but I just can't handle the way the author seems to skip over evidence for major concepts. I acknowledge that it might be that I need to read a LOT more on the history of Christian theology and biblical history before I know if the author is writing based on some famous theory I don't know about, but as this was NOT billed as an advanced historical treatise, I don't think it's unfair to ask for citations, especially for a concept that seems really sweeping in nature.