20-02-2025
Interview: David Levering Lewis on ‘The Stained Glass Window' and His Reading Life
In an email interview, the historian and biographer shared why it was 'time to look closer to home,' and praised the 'most honest presidential memoir' yet. SCOTT HELLER
What books are on your night stand?
David Greenberg, 'John Lewis: A Life'; Joshua Green, 'The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics'; Martha Hodes, 'My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering'; Michael Cook, 'A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity.'
What's the last great book you read?
The autobiography of Ulysses S. Grant. It is the most honest presidential memoir to date.
What's your favorite book no one else has heard of?
Ibn Hazm's 'The Ring of the Dove,' translated by A.J. Arberry (1953). An 11th-century treatise on Muslim love.
Describe your ideal reading experience.
I read Edith Wharton's 'In Morocco' while staying with my partner Dolores Root in Casablanca five or six years ago. Wharton visited the French protectorate to write a book that would appeal to tourists. Our hotel featured her clever work of propaganda on its shelves. I had missed it when I wrote 'God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215.'
How have your reading tastes changed over time?
My reading has followed the course of my work. My 1962 dissertation on Emmanuel Mounier and the liberal crisis within French Catholicism demanded a level of Francophone reading that has greatly diminished. Historical biography and the civil rights bibliography take most of my time these days. But I am determined to do much more reading of novels and memoirs.
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