I am a writer who lived in the city of Granada for almost four years, in the uncanny barrio of the Albayzin. The daily blessings of life there are powerful and cumulative, and I wrote a book in honor of such luminosity; and I wrote it, as well, because most of us have been lied to about Spanish history. But the truth, like the poetry of Garcia Lorca, cannot be suppressed. In my sojourn in Spain, and in my visits over the years, I have found Granada to be a treasure-house of stories and poetry; and in flamenco singing, the home of one of the most powerful art-forms of music in the world.
I wrote...
Granada: A Pomegranate in the Hand of God
By
Steven Nightingale
What is my book about?
Granada is one of the iconic cities of the world. It stands for the culture of Al-Andalus, composed of Muslims, Jews, and Christians, who lived together in the legendary convivencia of the Spanish Middle Ages. Al-Andalus was one of the most brilliant cultures in Mediterranean history and set in place the foundations of the European Renaissance.
The history of Granada is one of utopian ecstasy, vicious tragedy, mystical exaltation, and creations of durable beauty. It is a story of spiritual longing and artful dreams, with a bracing mixture of practical science, world-changing philosophy, and unforgettable music. It is a teaching story, where we can learn something about the best way forward in our own tumultuous epoch.
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The Books I Picked & Why
The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture
By
Jerrilynn D. Dodds,
María Rosa Menocal,
Abigail Krasner Balbale
Why this book?
These three women give us Al-Andalus in depth. They are scholars of prodigious learning. This book shows their gift for clear explanation and offers a rich selection of color illustrations that are not collected so cogently together in any other books about the period. It is a major achievement and a joy to read; indispensable for anyone who wants to understand the history of Spain.
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The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain
By
Paul Preston
Why this book?
The whole of Spanish history is contentious, with hardly a fact not subject to challenge or attack. But slowly, clarity and understanding have come forth, and finally, in this volume, the extraordinary scholar Paul Preston gives us the facts about the campaigns of extermination in the Spanish Civil War. Anyone who wants a solid, grounded, informed understanding of this miserable time of slaughter needs this book. Painful reading, and all the more necessary for that.
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The Legacy of Muslim Spain Volume 1
By
Salma Khadra Jayyusi
Why this book?
Incomparable. In the long effort by scholars to establish the facts about the brilliant period of Al-Andalus—711-1492—this book is a breakthrough and a marvel. Salma Khadra Jayyusi assembled the leading scholars in the field on a whole host of subjects, and the two volumes have everything from meditations on broad historical themes to detailed accounts of book-making, ceramics, and techniques of dyeing and weaving silk. No serious reader of the history of Spain should have to live without these two extraordinary volumes.
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God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215
By
David Levering Lewis
Why this book?
The perfect book, beautifully written, for anyone who wants to understand Spain and Al-Andalus in the context of medieval European history. Most of us are taught the history of Medieval Europe to the strange exclusion of the brilliant culture of Al-Andalus, but it remains the case that the whole history of Europe cannot be understood without knowing the contributions of the convivencia across a very wide spectrum of subjects—commerce, mathematics, agriculture, philosophy, and medicine, to name a few.
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The Spanish Inquisition, by Joseph Perez
By
Janet Lloyd,
Joseph Pérez
Why this book?
It is always good to have a close, thoughtful comprehensive examination of a mythical institution. This book corrects some of the legends and does us the important service of showing how the Inquisition was not merely dark and atrocious. With its violent and administrative mix of ideology and politics, it provided to the world a model for evil, and its influence is evident throughout subsequent history, from the show trials of Stalinist Russia to various totalitarian movements worldwide.
