Bernard Lewis is an accomplished researcher and scholar from Princeton. His volumes of books and scholarly publications have presented the western reader well-documented information on a region of the world that we must come to know and understand.

Most of the previous books written by Mr. Lewis are dedicated to a specific topic of the Middle-East. Some of the information is repeated in various formats throughout his books for essential purposes. However, in "From Babel to Dragomans", we find a compilation of book extractions, presentations, and research articles. The word 'dragoman' is loosely related to ambassadors. Therefore, based upon the title, one might be led to believe that the book would cover topics on diplomacy within the Islamic world and its relations with non-Islamic nations. Instead, we find non-contiguous essays on varying topics.

The book is divided into three major sections. It starts off with an overview of Islamic history and a study of linguistics within Arabic and the European languages. It then moves on to covering numerous topics that were previously presented in articles and/or book extractions. However, the issues and the timeframes he covers do not follow any set pattern, so there is a lack of continuity. The third major section includes thoughts on historical research of the region.

The positive aspect of the book is that it demonstrates the contributions of non-Arab influence within Islam, primarily from Iran and Turkey (Ottoman Empire). This point is significant since many in the west associate Islam primarily with the Arab countries.

If somebody has read several of Lewis' other books, this one will not provide any ground-breaking information, except the point made in the previous paragraph. This book will be beneficial for somebody looking for an in-depth study of Islam who has not read Lewis before.

This volume is a collection of fifty odd articles by one of the "grand old men" of Middle Eastern History, Bernard Lewis. Spanning materials written for a variety of venues over some forty years, it includes articles that range from extremely scholarly to highly polemical. Some are silly. Some are extraordinarily good. Many are simply dated. A handful are new to this volume.

For professors or graduate students in Middle Eastern studies, having this wide range of Lewis' material readily available is clearly very useful. For everyone else, I think it is just too much a mixed bag to be worth the money or the effort.