doel7's review against another edition
1.0
This was an exceedingly jingoistic, unscholarly, ludicrous retelling of the Barbary Wars. Like many authors writing about this historical event, the author feels the need to compare the Barbary corsairs to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. As I have said before, this is a stupid comparison. The only reason is it made is so neoconservative Americans to attack Islam and to claim that "the war with radical Islam has been going on forever." The book itself, filled with typos, is quite antiquated. Its citation format is dated as is its spelling of the word Muslim (spelt Moslem). The names of most of the Muslim characters are spelt how Americans would have spelt them in the 18th century (Mahomet, Hamet, Soliman, Unis). On the second page the author mentions that Europeans called Barbary corsair attacks "The Terror", for which he gives no citation and in all the books and articles and primary sources I have read about this subject, which is a lot, I have never once heard it called "The Terror". The only reason that this made up fact is used is so that once again the connection between the Barbary Wars and the War on Terror can be made. Later on the author extols of the virtues of America while castigating the Barbary states as "medieval, closed, tyrannical and corrupt." He goes on to state that it would "difficult to find more dissimilar nations than the United States and the...Barbary States." This of course is true seeing as how the amount of slaves in all the Barbary states numbered hardly above 10,000 while across the ocean over 600,000 slaves laboured for Americans, one of whom is the name sake of this very book! The author rarely mentions black slavery in America while going on and on about slavery in Barbary. In the third chapter he opens with a quote from the Quran book 9 verse 5, or the verse of the sword, taking the verse totally out of context and without explanation leaving the reader to think, unless he or she possesses a brain, that Islam is a religion of violence. Chapter two, the introduction to the history of the Barbary states, relies heavily on two books, one written in 1901, that simply restate Orientalist ramblings about the East. The newest book the author uses for this chapter was published in 1984. The author's bibliography is tiny and which I would probably add 5 or 6 books that he should have read before writing this one. This of course does not come as a surprise because the author is a journalist by profession and has little to no academic historical training. In a few years I will be more qualified to write a history book than him. All in all, the book does not add anything to the field of study, it does not profess any new ideas like all good history books should. It simply recycles the old stereotypes of Muslims as violent, bloodthirsty, greedy tyrants, adding in a few "ra-ra-ra America is great" jingoisms, and attempts to compare them to todays Muslims. I would recommend this book only to smart people who are capable of seeing that this book is pack of silliness.
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