About this item
We in the west share a common narrative of world history. But our story largely omits a whole civilization whose citizens shared an entirely different narrative for a thousand years.In Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary tells the rich story of world history as the Islamic world saw it, from the time of Mohammed to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and beyond. He clarifies why our civilizations grew up oblivious to each other, what happened when they intersected, and how the Islamic world was affected by its slow recognition that Europe - a place it long perceived as primitive and disorganized - had somehow hijacked destiny.
About the Author
Tamim Ansary was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and came to the United States as a junior in high school. He has written a history of the world through Islamic eyes, a history of Afghanistan from an insider's point of view, a literary memoir about straddling a cultural fault line in the world, a historical novel set against the background of the First Anglo-Afghan war, and some 30 nonfiction books for children. His latest memoir, Road Trips, tells the story of an Afghan boy becoming an American amidst the cultural turmoil of the late sixties. Ansary's world history, Destiny Disrupted, won the Northern California Book Award for nonfiction in 2009. His first memoir West of Kabul, East of New York was selected as San Francisco's One City One Book pick for 2008, and and by Waco, Texas for the same honor in 2004. The day after the events of 9/11, Ansary wrote an email to some 20 friends, who forwarded it to their friends: that email became, reputedly, the first viral phenomenon of the Internet age, reaching tens of millions within a week. Ansary now hosts www.memoirpool.com, a blog dedicated to the art of the real life story, where he publishes both his own stories and those of guest authors.
