Book Review: The Fatimids and their Traditions of Learning

This is the first book published by the IIS that I’ve read – actually, it is the first one that I’ve completed… I’ve tried reading a couple of other ones before but I found that either the book was too academic or my knowledge of Islam was too sparce to be able to understand.  This book on the other hand was a pretty easy and quick read.  Although I do think that it does assume that you have some basic knowledge of Islam, Shia’ism, and Ismailism.  Basically, it gives a  great synposis of the Fatimids.  The book is based on themes rather than in chronological order, to jump around a bit. I also could’ve used more illustrations (I mean ‘pictures’…) – oh, and for some reason the names given to the Imams don’t exactly match the names that Ismailis learn which is confusing… but overall this was a good book.

Anyone have a recommendation for the next one to read in the IIS collection?