The Library

After reading the Qur’an in three different English translations, I wanted to go more deeply into the long history of Islam and its encounters with the West. Sword and Scimitar is a much more recent book than my usual reading, but it covers centuries of conflict with a clear narrative line. Raymond Ibrahim structures the book around eight major battles between Islamic and Western forces, using them as windows into the larger sweep of history. It’s a story filled with shifting empires, religious motivations, and recurring patterns of expansion and resistance.
Having spent time with the Qur’an first, I found the historical material more grounded — the ideas, the language, and the worldview were already familiar, which made the conflicts easier to understand in context. It reminded me of how essential the Tanakh and the New Testament were for reading Paradise Lost: without the underlying texts, the larger work floats unanchored. The same is true here. Reading the sacred texts first gives you the grammar before the literature, the worldview before the history.
The book doesn’t shy away from the violence or the complexity, and it helped me see how deeply these encounters shaped the Mediterranean world. It’s not a philosophical work, but a historical one — brisk, detailed, and useful for understanding how ideas and armies moved across centuries.

Another classic I felt I had to read in full, and it rewards the effort. Spinoza structures "The Ethics" like a work of geometry — definitions, axioms, propositions, proofs — as if he were building a philosophical universe with the same precision Euclid used to describe space. It’s an unusual way to present ideas about God, nature, emotion, and human freedom, but the structure is part of the point: Spinoza believed that truth should be demonstrated, not merely asserted. I first became aware of the book years ago, when I ate at a restaurant in Charlotte named after one of its propositions — an intriguing name, though I was far too busy running a busy arts organization to explore it then. Only much later did I return to discover what that name pointed toward. Spinoza himself had been expelled from the Amsterdam Jewish community at a young age — a break that must have cut deeply — and the calm, rigorous independence of "The Ethics" feels like the worldview he built in the aftermath. It’s demanding, but remarkably modern, and it’s easy to see why Spinoza continues to influence philosophers, scientists, and political thinkers centuries later.

Another work I felt I had to read in its entirety, and I’m glad I did. Paradise Lost is astonishing — an epic of such scale and ambition that it’s no wonder people keep quoting it after so many centuries. Milton’s language can be demanding, but the power of the poetry is undeniable. Samuel Johnson once remarked that no one ever wished it longer, which is a bit snarky but not entirely wrong. What makes the achievement even more remarkable is that Milton was completely blind when he composed it; he dictated the entire poem, line by line, from memory and imagination. This used to be mandatory reading in freshman English classes; I imagine that’s no longer the case. Still, it more than earns its place in the canon. Reading it straight through gives you a sense of Milton’s sheer intellectual force, and why this poem has shaped English literature ever since.