A HISTORY OF THE ARAB PEOPLES

The wonderful Nadia May is her wondrous best in this outstanding production of Hourani’s expansive history of Arab culture, history, and religion. The text is a curative to the general Western ignorance of Islam, its long and troubled history with Western nations and with Christianity and Judaism, and its sense of mission—cultural, historical, and religious—in challenging the West. It is in one volume an entry, like the storybooks of childhood, into a strange and miraculous realm. For all of this, May is the ideal reader. Her unfailing command of pace, nuance, and textual value has an authority that matches Hourani’s own, and listening to this vast reconstruction, which stretches from ancient times into our own, is like hearing History’s own voice, ageless and omniscient, high above the fray. As in her transcendent narrations of works by Barbara Tuchman, May validates here the claim of the audiobook not just to stand shoulder to shoulder with the text—but like theater or film—to stand apart as a unique genre and interpretation. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2011]