Occidentalism: The West In The Eyes Of Its Enemies

"Succinct, elegant, and challenging . . . Its insights and the link it makes are illuminating, and help show that the divide between the West and its enemies is an old one."--"The Economist."

This agrandly illuminating study of two centuries of anti-Western ideasa ("Foreign Affairs") traces the historical roots of a virulent set of stereotypes about Westerners and the West, a cluster of notions and prejudices that Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit call Occidentalism. The path does not lead back to Islam but, in fact, back to the West itself. From nineteenth-century Germany and Russia to twentieth-century Japan, China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, Buruma and Margalit track the spread of these noxious ideas. Drawing on their formidable range and gift for synthesis to place modern terrorists in a long continuum of enemies of Western liberal society, Buruma and Margalit have written a book of extraordinary clarity and wide-ranging relevance.