Someone dropped a potent clue-pill in the water-cooler at New York Review of Books (NYRB), because they've recently published some excellent surveys of books on Islam and radical Islam. For readers who might not have the knowledge of obscure American journals, NYRB has been regularly left of some of the most reliable leftist media outlets in the United States. It is very left.
However, Malise Ruthven's work surveying current books and ideas in the world of radical Islam is worth reading if only because of his informed and dispassionate insights into books you may be unfamiliar with, like :
The Sayyid Qutb Reader: Selected Writings on Politics, Religion, and Society
edited by Albert J. Bergesen
Routledge, 175 pp., $135.00; $34.95 (paper)The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State
by Noah Feldman
Princeton University Press, 189 pp., $22.95
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