Brent Neely reviews Gabriel Said Reynolds' new book

In our first NETS Book Review, Brent Neely, our Vice President for Academic Affairs, reviews the new book by Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Emergence of Islam: Classical Traditions in Contemporary Perspective (Fortress Press, 2012).

Download the PDF by clicking here. Here is the first paragraph of the review:

Gabriel Said Reynolds' The Emergence of Islam: Classical Traditions in Contemporary Perspective  is a masterfully-written book. The argument is propelled by an engaging style, economy of words, and a momentum built in to the structure of the book. Reynolds' approach is academic and empirical, but the target audience is educated non-specialists. His tone is candid without being sensational or polemical. In fact, his ability to give context and a fair hearing to a wide spread of data is rather refreshing given the contentious nature of much writing on Muhammad and Islam. In terms of spirit one might place Reynolds somewhere between the poles of philo-Islamic advocates and anti-Islamic polemicists, a polarity which he explicitly illustrates with reference to Karen Armstrong and to Robert Spencer (locations 198-212, Kindle Edition).