Monday, April 28, 2008


50 Mathematical Ideas You Really Need To Know, by Tony Crilly.
ISBN 978-1-84724-147-4. This book as the title implies covers 50 mathematical ideas. It has a four page section for each idea. Each section is just a basic overview of the topic, but they are fun to read if you are interested in this subject. The only thing I would have liked to have seen was a reference section at the end that would point the reader to additional information about the various topics. On the other hand, the reader can easily look these topics up in wikipedia to get more info and further references. Some of the topics covered are zero, number systems (numeral systems), fractions, squares and square roots. Other subjects include pi, e, infinity, imaginary numbers, primes.

Monday, April 14, 2008

The Bible, A Biography (Books that changed the World series), by Karen Armstrong. ISBN 978-0-87113-969-6. This book is about the history of the bible, old and new testament. I found it interesting and easy to read.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World by Karen Armstrong, ISBN 0-385-72140-4. This books is about the European attempt to gain control over the Jerusalem. She discusses the reasons this was done and the effects it has had on the people of Europe and the Middle East since. In particular she discusses how the current Israeli-Arab conflict is affected by this history.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Biography and Mission of Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab by Jalal Abualrub. First edition June 2003, ISBN 0-9703766-5-0. This book is the opposite of the "Moon-o-theism" book. This author is very much a true believer in Islam, in particular, the brand endorsed by the subject of the book. At least that is the impression I got while reading this book. This book is a bit difficult to read because of the extensive footnotes. Almost all pages have footnotes and about half the time the footnotes are more than half the page. These footnotes contains much of the actual text of the book, not just the usual references. The author spends a great deal of time quoting from other books and then, generally, describing why those other authors are incorrect. The subject of the book is the founder of the Wahhabi movement. Followers prefer to be called Salafi or Muwahid.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008


Moon-o-theism is a two volume 1100+ page book by Yoel Natan. ISBN 1-4116-0106-8 and ISBN 1-4116-1765-7. The full text of this book is available on books.google.com (see the links above.) The main idea of this book is that the god of Islam is a moon and war god of ancient Arabia. This is not the generally accepted idea that most Muslims would have about their faith. The book appears to be the result of a massive amount of research as there are 4800+ footnotes and references to other books. The author finds it difficult to contain his sarcasm, however, frequently referring to academics that he disagrees with as "acaDhimmis". (See wikipedia for a description of a dhimmi.)