Lost Enlightenment is a substantial and stunning history. It is impeccably researched, and impressively broad and insightful. It is a fine example of the value that intellectual history has to offer a modern, lay audience.

Coming to this book as an enthusiastic reader of the history of ideas generally, scientific and political ideas particularly, I found myself drawn into a shockingly unfamiliar period and geography. Thus, for two major reasons I would advocate reading this book. Firstly, it’s aforementioned value as a work of intellectual history. Secondly, as a substantial exploration of an area of the world that is largely neglected or poorly highlighted by western history at large. Central Asia was a major contributor to civilization. It is far too simple to assume otherwise given the area's contemporary, and more recent flaccidity.

The reason this book scores 4 rather than 5 stars is its single weakness, a stylistic weakness. No doubt in order to better explain the context of the development of ideas, Starr moves through time in a slightly choppy manner. While I understand the importance of such a pace generally, it unfortunately affects the flow of ideas, and as a result, the simplicity of Starr’s expounding of those thoughts.

I found this a bit of a slog. It was fascinating, extremely detailed, and overall well written. It's definitely more on the academic side of publishing rather than popular history though. I think part of the reason I found it hard to keep going was that the book was not what I thought it would be. I was expecting more of a scientific history, detailing the discoveries and rediscoveries of the relatively unknown in the west thinkers from Central Asia. Instead, the book is more of a social-political history analyzing the conditions that gave rise to a large number of thinkers in a number of fields between about 700 and 1200 AD. The book also looks at what led to the downfall (diminution? end?) of the period. It was very interesting, but without prior knowledge or interest in the area, I found the names hard to keep straight. The author also assumes some familiarity with the principle characters, places, and religions, which I don't have. In the end, he attributes much of the decline to Sunni-vs-Shiite strife, with a related decline from the rise of Sufism. I still couldn't tell you what the difference between Sunni and Shiite is though.

I very rarely give up on books. If I start a book, I usually suffer it through, no matter what. Not with this one. I have listened a bit over half of the audiobook, and now I'm officially giving up.

To be clear, this might have good content, but the narrator of the audio book is unbearably boring and incredibly monotonous. I start listening and after fifteen minutes i realize I haven't really taken in anything, my mind is wondering and I have no idea what has happened in the book.

So I have listened several hours of this, but I still know absolutely nothing about the golden age in Central Asia. It's time to stop and try to find some other book if I wish to learn something about this subject.

While this is an important book for scholars, teachers, and students of World History, it is also an important book for a general audience in that it dispels some important myths about the transmission and evolution of "ancient knowledge": the Renaissance did not come directly from the Greeks via the Arabs. Central Asians played a crucial and heretofore underappreciated role in this process. It's a long read, and perhaps too much so, but it provides exhaustive detail to make its points and thus Starr effectively supports his arguments. I personally found it more informative than enjoyable, but it was worth it for the stories and unique insight.

I actually did not finish - I got bogged down in the middle section about Muslim theological disputes - but the earlier sections were fascinating. The book description is accurate, can't think of anything I'd add.

Valuable survey of Central Asian intellectual and cultural currents at the region’s most vibrant period, between the Arab conquest and the reign of Tamerlane. So many “firsts” that were suppressed or forgotten and not rediscovered or reinvented until centuries later in Western Europe. Accessible to lay audiences but generously footnoted for anyone who wants to dig deeper. Suffice it to say, there was much more to the Silk Road than commerce and trade.

I would have appreciated better maps, perhaps with more detail, but the color plates and B&W illustrations were quite helpful.

Starr's book is a 500+ page tour-de-force of historical analysis that does a good job of asking probing questions without being overly prescriptive of the answers. This narrative provides a great introduction to a Western reader with limited familiarity with the role of Central Asia (modern-day Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, and southern Kazakhstan) in advances in the observational sciences, medicine, mathematics, literature, and dozens of other fields in the period from the time of the Arab conquests of the region (c. 660 CE) to the end of the brief but expansive Timur empire of Tamerlane (c. 1506). Starr's analysis shows that much of the intellectual and cultural ferment ascribed to the Islamic world in these years can be ascribed to "home-grown" talent from this region, writing in the lingua franca of the empire (Arabic and Persian) and shuttling between the various entrepots of locally-powerful leaders in the loosely controlled caliphate empire managed out of Baghdad. While for me it was important to try to uncover the reasons why this flowering of culture and civilization declined, Starr makes it clear that it is of equal importance for us to understand the ingredients and actions that created and fostered such a fruitful period of human achievement. This book is a wonderful read for anyone who wants to understand better our world situation. There are copious endnotes and plenty of references for interested readers who find something they would like to pursue further. The writing is excellently clear and engaging, with plenty of interesting detail of both character and setting. Highly recommended.

Had to put this book down 5 chapters in. Starr fails to provide any critical and significant primary source analysis to support the substantial claims he makes about the nature of the intellectual history of the period. It is a blatant overture to western readers looking for a way to divest the Islamic tradition of its intellectual achievements. At every turn Starr seems to try his best to downplay Arab involvement in any "positive" development in what quickly becomes an obvious bias. He tends to spend little time engaging with what occasionally actually compelling points he brings up, and instead goes on discursive tangents about broad personal claims.

Ultimately, the book just feels so anti-historical, like Starr has a personal disdain for any complex analysis. He relies heavily on secondary work, which he generally uses uncritically. Perplexingly, he will at times mention the questionable credibility of a source/claim, only to then base an interpretation off of it anyway.