Robert Irwin's book on the history of Orientalism traverses a path from Ancient Greece to the present. It shows that, whether through philological comparisons between Arabic and Hebrew, recording the coins of Fatimid Egypt, or determining the essential chronology of Harun al-Rashid's military campaigns against the Byzantine Empire, scholars have been united not by politics or ideology but by their common obsession. The book "Lust of Knowing" is an exceptional, passionate work, both as a sustained argument and as a brilliant piece of original research.