Al-Khalili presents a myth-shattering view of the medieval Islamic world's myriad scientific innovations, which preceded--and enabled--the European Renaissance.

Al-Khalili presents a myth-shattering view of the medieval Islamic world's myriad scientific innovations, which preceded--and enabled--the European Renaissance.

** A myth-shattering view of the Islamic world's myriad scientific innovations and the role they played in sparking the European Renaissance.**

Many of the innovations that we think of as hallmarks of Western science had their roots in the Arab world of the middle ages, a period when much of Western Christendom lay in intellectual darkness. Jim al- Khalili, a leading British-Iraqi physicist, resurrects this lost chapter of history, and given current East-West tensions, his book could not be timelier. With transporting detail, al-Khalili places readers in the hothouses of the Arabic Enlightenment, shows how they led to Europe's cultural awakening, and poses the question: Why did the Islamic world enter its own dark age after such a dazzling flowering?