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Much has been written about what the west learned and adapted to the challenge of Islam, but very few works have taken the other side of this issue. Bernard Lewis attempts to do just that in his book, The Muslim Discovery of Europe which examines how confrontation with the Christendom Europe affected Islamic culture from the middle ages to the mid nineteenth century. Lewis explores how the cultural barriers between Christendom and Islam gradually broke down during this time and how this led to the Muslim world's changing views of Europe. Because Islamic civilization was considerably more brilliant than its European counterpart from Islam's early days up through the Ottoman zenith in the 16th century, Muslims didn't find much reason to be interested in the West. While Europe's Roman forbears might be worth a glance, Islam’s attitude of European before 1800 was that of a backward, filthy, unredeemable society with very little to offer. Muslim scholars reasoned that Europe had little important ideas and literature. Consequently, for centuries, educated Muslims thought it was a waste of time to learn anything about Europe. However, by 1800, the Islamic attitude changed. New confrontations with the west, most notably Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign in 1798, illustrated how far the west had grown and advanced militarily, scientifically, politically, and economically. These confrontation proved to the Muslim world how much more advanced Europe was as a society. Unlike previous eras, many Islamic scholars, inventors, soldiers, and politicians began a serious study of the west as a means to help improve their society. Lewis’ book translates well to our time considering the current struggle in the Muslim world between Islamic tradition and westernization.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies is a modern classic attempting to analyze why European and Asian civilizations have been able to dominate other world cultures. Although more of an anthropological study than pure history, major events and cultures in the book are explained within an historical context. Diamond points out that nearly all of humanity's achievements (scientific, artistic, architectural, political, etc.) have occurred on the Eurasian continent, while the native peoples of other continents (Africa and the Americas for instance) have been largely conquered, displaced, and in some extreme cases exterminated by Eurasian military and political advantages stemming from the early rise of agriculture after the last Ice Age. He proposes explanations to account for such disproportionate and lopsided distributions of power and achievements in history focusing on mainly geographical factors accounting for, among other things, why Europeans had such superior military technology and were able to often devastate and conquered large native populations in Africa and the Americas.

A national book award winner, The Worst Hard Time tells the story of the “Dust Bowl”, probably the most devastating ecological disaster ever experienced in the United States. The High Plains of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico went through a bonanza of over-farming in the 1920s. When the rains stopped and the wind picked up in the early 1930s, the stripped earth began to stir and blow to devastating effect, sending millions of tons of dust across much of the nation. In the High Plains, the power of these blinding black blizzards of dust was such that it was often impossible to "see your hand in front of your face," according to one survivor.

In The Worst Hard Time, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Timothy Egan brilliantly captures the story of the Dust Bowl as seen through the eyes of the individuals who lived through the punishing storms that ravaged the American High Plains during the Depression. This chilling account not only tells how these storms affected humans and livestock and life itself in the Plains, but also describes in some detail the causes of the disaster and FDR's response to the hardship as part of the New Deal.

The movie Defiance is based on Nechama Tec’s book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, which recounts the World War II heroics of a Jewish partisan movement credited for saving the lives of over 1,200 people during the Holocaust. This amazing tale of Jewish resistance and rescue, which takes place on the eastern front during World War II, was led by Tuvia Bielski and his two brothers Asael and Zus. The Bielski brothers lived normal lives until confronted with the horrors of the Holocaust. Instead of assuming the role of passive victims, the brothers defied the Nazi oppression by forming a partisan operation that roamed the Belorussian woods resisting Nazi military action in the region. Perhaps the most amazing part of their story is that they also served as rescuers, protecting over 1,200 Jewish people by establishing a refugee camp in the Belorussian woods that went undetected during the course of the war. This narrative tale recounts the actions of the Bielski Partisans during the course of the war, showing us that Jewish people were not just passive victims of the Holocaust. From their community also came bold resistance leaders who actively resisted the Nazi barbarity and in the process saved thousands of lives.

With the inauguration of a new President in January and observance of Lincoln’s 200 birthday in February, we will examine the most studied Presidential administration in history. Winner of the 2006 Lincoln Prize, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln tells the story of Lincoln’s presidency through an examination of not just Lincoln himself, but his entire cabinet, a team of personal and political competitors, four of whom were personal rivals to the 1860 Republican presidential nomination. In examining the five key players in the Lincoln administration through thousands of personal letters from cabinet members and from President Lincoln, Goodwin is able to put together a wonderfully clear and unique picture of the character of these men and how together they he lead the nation through its greatest crisis.