The House of Wisdom by Jonathan Lyons Bloomsbury, HK$121
Sometimes this book just tries too hard. In showing how Arab thinkers changed Europe and the debt that is largely unacknowledged, Jonathan Lyons explains how Arab science and philosophy helped 'rescue the Christian world from ignorance and made possible the very idea of the West'. Words we use today hint at0 that legacy: we can thank the Arabs for everything from artichokes to algebra (even, apparently, Morris folk dance, a corruption of Moorish dancing). In The House of Wisdom, the author assesses the centuries following the fall of Rome, when Western Europe was in the shadows; one bright spark, 12th-century scholar and adventurer Adelard of Bath, saved it from the Dark Ages by translating Arabic works of science (astronomy, mathematics, etc) into Latin, including an Arabic version of Euclid's Elements. According to Lyons, outright anti-Muslim prejudice (going back to the Crusades) is one reason why most 'giants of Arab learning' have been forgotten. That he has reminded us of al-Khwarizmi's algebra, al-Idrisi's cartography and the origins of the astrolabe is important. So too is his message that Islam is not inherently hostile to innovation.