“Few people can talk about God, scripture, humanity, art, and piety as Bruce B. Lawrence can: elegantly, eloquently, and effortlessly. Both general and specialist audiences will find this reader compelling for its clarity and pedagogy. Gems of the Qur'an dance alongside mystical insights, seamlessly joined to world events and to Muslim societies and beyond, over time. An exemplary scholar tells us how history shapes ideas and people, especially the manifold ways we experience the sublime.”
- Ebrahim Moosa, Mirza Family Professor of Islamic Thought and Muslim Societies, University of Notre Dame “In bringing together Bruce B. Lawrence's pieces, this volume raises awareness of his original, significant, and exceptionally broad contributions to the study of religion and especially Islam.”
- Marcia Hermansen, Director of Islamic World Studies at Loyola University Chicago “Ali Altaf Mian, finding in Lawrence a brilliant mind and expansive attitude toward Islam, has collected here a remarkable selection of Lawrence’s most significant articles. . . . This collection is an impressive array of scholarship on the Muslim world, worth reading from cover to cover, even by insiders with a more than passing knowledge of Islam.”
- Janet M. Powers (Religion) "The Bruce B. Lawrence Reader is a window into the mind of a master scholar who has spent a lifetime learning and teaching that Islam has much to offer to the world if understood properly. . . . It was a joy to read this edited collection and I would recommend it to any serious students of Islam."
- Mansur Ali (Muslim World Book Review)
