Author: María Rosa Menocal
Publisher: Plaza y Janes
Al-Andalus for the Muslims and Separad for the Jewish. Names that evoke a unique chapter in Spanish History, when Muslims, Jewish and Christians succeeded in making the Iberian Peninsula a vibrant society marked by coexistence in a framing of tolerance and respect.

Author: Bernard Lewis
Publisher: Harper Perennial
For many centuries, Islam was the world's greatest, most open, most enlightened, most creative, most powerful civilisation. And then everything changed, as the previously despised West won victory after victory, first on the battlefield and in the marketplace, then in almost every aspect of public and even private life.