Stoicism 1 - A Critique

[From Frank Schulwolf] On Friday, July 7th, at The Villages (FL) Philosophy Club, we were offered up the philosophy of stoicism. By contemporary standards stoicism is perhaps not seen as a major philosophical movement—it is none the less deserving of a more thorough examination than the one presented.

A philosophy should deliver a good deal more than a disconnected set of floating bromides, clichés

or homilies. Philosophy studies the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence. Philosophy’s

task is providing man with a comprehensive view of life, which in turn provides a comprehensive

reference for all his action—mental or physical, psychological or existential.

Stoicism as presented was bereft of intellectual content. We learned nothing of its structural workings

as a system. No raison d'être. We are instead given selected chestnuts of wisdom (I paraphrase) “Stoics do not respond to anger with anger." Perhaps a useful tool when backed by rationale. Unanchored it is without value.

If we set aside the lighter than air presentation, we find that Stoicism holds specific views on the

nature of the universe and mans place within it. A number of these are problematic positions—

many of which if verbalized in presentation would not be likely to attract adherents. Some so repugnant, all but the numbest would head for the exits.

Stoicism is a by design/determinist philosophy, with all that implies. The philosophical equivalent of

(the movie) Ground Hog Day. In the Stoic universe, all has happened before. Because the universe

is eternal it will happen endlessly again and again. It is therefore futile and a waste of time

bemoaning ones fate. Realize instead, an unlimited acceptance of “reality” because it was all

meant to happen. That in turn means emotions are irrelevant because it was supposed to happen.

So, why not be good boys and girls, follow the rules and control your emotions. They are worse

than useless. They are irrational and therefore counter productive. Such a simplistic proposition

disregards the nature of emotions.

Emotions are the product of man’s premises, held consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly. Man’s emotional mechanism is very important component of the computer, which his mind has to program—and the programming consists of the values his mind chooses. Its main function being the integration of ideas.

If you consign your emotions to the dustbin, your disciplined emotional repression will deny your conscious mind the tools necessary to reach firm convictions. It is your conscious mind that programs the computer. If you default, if you cannot reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance—and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted. A rational man knows—or makes it a point to discover—the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand. In appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no need to repress them.

Interestingly, while the Greeks idealized man, The Stoics degraded him by calling for the suppression

of emotion.

The philosophy of Stoicism produces the antithesis of what our founding fathers had in mind—the

individual pursuing his happiness. Determinism recognizes no individuals. A position antithetical to

our Bill of Rights. What is more, determinisms flaws lead to nightmarish ethical issues.* This from

a philosophy which proudly proclaims its dedication to reason.

Frank Schulwolf

* See Ivan’s argument in The Brothers Karamazov

"Insanely Great" - The Apple Computer Design Philosophy of Steve Jobs

I presented this talk to the Philosophy Club of The Villages, FL this past Friday afternoon (10 March 2017) to an enthusiastic audience, followed by a great cross-discussion in which my wife, Vi, and grandchild Alex (a first-year student at Bryn Mawr) participated.

Jobs was born in 1955 and died in 2011, at the comparatively young age of 56, of pancreatic cancer. Despite his relatively short life, he had an inordinate effect on computer-related technology. From the original 1977 Apple II to the 2010 iPad, Steve Jobs’ design philosophy of obsessive focus, extreme simplicity, and products that just work, has enriched my life and the lives of my wife and family. Even if you never used an Apple product, he has changed your life as well. 

Much of the information in my talk is from the excellent biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

In 2004, a year after he was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Jobs asked Isaacson to write his biography, but Isaacson didn't start the job until 2009, when Jobs' wife, Laurene Powell told him of the extent of Jobs' illness, and thus the urgency of the task. The book was published in 2011, shortly after Jobs' death.

According to Isaacson, Steve Jobs revolutionized six industries: Personal Computers, Digital Publishing, Animated Movies, Music, Cell-Phones, and Tablet Computers.

OUR PURCHASE OF AN APPLE II

In 1977, when the Apple II was first marketed, I was working for IBM's Federal Systems Division which specializes in computer and computer-based systems for military aircraft and spacecraft. In 1978, with the enthusiastic support of my wife, we purchased Apple II serial number 14,102. The purchase price was about $15,000 in 2017 dollars, including disk drives and a floating-point card we purchased later. (When we first took it home, our Apple II was limited to a tape drive and integer arithmetic.) Eventually over 5,000,000 Apple II's were sold, so we were definitely "early adopters".

Our Apple II (photo above) is over 38 years old and has been in storage for 25 years. I recently removed it from the plastic tub in which it has spent over two decades.

Today, of course, $15,000 will buy you more than a dozen top-end laptops or tablet computers. Indeed, for a few hundred bucks you can have a wonderful Windows 10 laptop that is nearly infinitely faster, more capable, and better than our original Apple II. Also, a heck of a lot smaller and lighter, AND with a better display.

HOW OUR APPLE II BENEFITED OUR FAMILY

However, I credit that $15,000 investment in 1978 for helping me in my career with IBM, for motivating my wife into going back to college and adding a Masters Degree in Computer Science to her previous Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. She taught Computer Science at Binghamton University and then became a Software Engineer at the IBM Federal Systems facility in Owego, NY, where I was employed as a System Engineer. Prior to IBM introducing the first Windows Personal Computer (PC), I used my Apple II to learn programming. I also lugged it to work and demonstrated the capabilities of the Apple II personal computer while teaching system engineering classes at IBM.

Due to my experience with the Apple II, when IBM Owego obtained its first IBM PC in 1981, I was chosen to be the first employee to get one in his office! That helped build my reputation at work as being something of an expert on how a PC best fits into an engineer's office.

Our children also benefited! In May 1980, when computers were first introduced into the local school system, our oldest daughter, Lisa, was selected to demonstrate the Apple II. Her photo was published in our local newspaper (Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin) along with the story. [See Photo below]

A month later, in June 1980, our middle daughter, Rena, and our youngest, Sara, were shown using our Apple II at home in the same newspaper. [See Photo above. NOTE: The "Computers 'R' Us" images in this posting are from:  http://tvpclub.blogspot.com/2014/08/50th-3-computers-r-us-ira-and-vis.html one of our 2014 50th Anniversary postings on this Blog. Click the link for more information.]

All three of our daughters went on to earn advanced degrees (two PhD's and a Masters) and they married wonderful young men who are also highly computer-literate and well-educated leaders in exploiting computer power to enrich our lives.

I also went on to add a 1990 Masters Degree in System Science to my 1961 Bachelors in Electrical Engineering. My PhD in System Science was added in 1996.

WE WERE READY TO EXPLOIT THE IBM PC WHEN IT WAS INTRODUCED

Vi and I also purchased an IBM PC for home use as soon as they became available under an employee purchase plan in 1982.

At that time, I was leading an Independent Research and Development project at IBM Owego in preparation for submitting a bid for a Helicopter Avionics System. My "Rational Cockpit" design concept featured a dual-redundant data bus, two Mission Computers (MC) and four Multi-Purpose Displays (MPD). I used our home PC, along with my office PC, to develop a demonstration of display formats for the MPDs, which, at that time, were a complete departure from traditional dedicated display devices for each subsystem and function.

When we wrote the proposal, I was the Lead Engineer for the Technical Proposal volume. We provided a PC-based working demonstration of the MPDs to our customer as part of a mock-up of the cockpit. That helped us win the contract, which resulted in a nice award for me, as well as membership in IBM's 1983 Golden Circle, celebrated by us in Hawaii! [Photo below]




Vi later became the Lead Software Engineer for the Avionics System for two different Special Forces helicopters. The dual-redundant, two MC system architecture and four MPD display concept I pioneered, and the software that Vi built and perfected, were utilized, in a later version, for the helicopters that captured Osama Bin Laden! [Photos below]



WHAT MADE STEVE JOBS SPECIAL?

Steve Jobs had a very peculiar upbringing and youth. As depicted in the graphic below, he dabbled in a stew of COUNTER-CULTURE, FLOWER-POWER, ZEN BUDDHISM, and MARIJUANA, among other questionable pursuits. He was also interested in ARTS and the HUMANITIES. Given that combination of youthful pursuits, you might think he'd end up with a job where all you have to say is "You want fries with that?"

However, partially due to his early friendship with Steve Wozniak, Jobs combined all that stuff with TECHNOLOGY, Steve Jobs was  AT THE NEXUS - a UNIQUE  FUSION of FLOWER-POWER and COMPUTER POWER. 

Jobs and Wozniak ("Woz") were best friends. Around 1971 they built and sold “BLUE BOXES” to hack Into Phone System.

Summary of Jobs' early life:

Born 1955: Birth Father: Abdulfattah Jandali, Muslim, Syria; Birth Mother: Joanne Schieble, Catholic of Swiss and German descent, Wisconsin. He referred to them as merely: “My sperm and egg bank.”

He was adopted in 1955 by Paul and Clara Jobs. He calls them “My parents 1,000%”  

Father - Paul Jobs: From a Calvinist household, Wisconsin. HS dropout, mechanic, WWII Coast Guard machinist. Later, a “repo man”, car repairman. Mother - Clara Hagopian: Daughter of Armenian immigrants in San Francisco, widow.

In 1972 he took up with his girlfriend Chrisann Brennan. She has said he was enlightened but could be cruel. In 1977 they had a baby (Lisa Brennan) who was raised by Chrisann, but later accepted into the Jobs' household.

Jobs was powerfully affected by the Vietnam Era Meme of “turn on, tune in, drop out”, LSD, marijuana, … and Buddhism. He said he believed that “Intuitive understanding and consciousness more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis.” 

In fits and starts he was a vegetarian, fruitarian, went on extreme diets and purges, ... Jobs spent time in a commune, noticed that members were secretly stealing each other’s food, and their leader was selfishly running it as a business.

In 1972 he was admitted to expensive Reed College (Portland OR). Woz (then a student at Berkeley) visited Jobs at Reed College. Jobs complained about required courses and said he only attended courses he liked. Bored, he dropped out, did not pay tuition. But Reed College allowed him to attend classes he desired and live in dorms with friends.

Jobs visited India in mid 1970’s. Worked at Atari 1974-75. He was arrogant, brash, had b.o. and was banished to the night shift. Woz (then at HP) did the arcade game Breakout for Jobs in  record time and with a minimum number of computer chips. This is an early example of REALITY DISTORTION, Jobs' ability to get other people to believe and do unreasonable things and achieve unexpectedly good results!  

The image below includes photos of some of the unique products and services brought to fruition via Jobs' incredible REALITY DISTORTION powers. 

Note that Jobs was forced out of his company (Apple) in 1985 and did not return until 1997. During that time, he developed the NeXT computer (not a financial success, but with some innovative software features) and lead Pixar into major advances in Computer Animation, used for Toy Story and other classics that grossed hundreds of millions. 

When he returned to then-struggling Apple, he helped them get back into their innovative mode by introducing the iMac Personal Computer, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, as well as the Macbook Air laptop.  

I was an early adopter of only two Apple products, each purchased within a year ot their introduction: Our Apple II (1978) and iPad (2011). Due to our employment at IBM, Vi and I did then, and still do, all our serious work on IBM/Windows PCs and laptops. Our cellphones are Androids! However, we credit Steve Jobs for introducing similar products, later copied and further innovated and produced by other corporations, that make all our lives richer.

The above images are what I call "mirror selfies". Using an iPad to take a photo of myself using an iPad to take a photo of myself and the iPad! At the left, my iPad in 2011 (the year after the first iPad was introduced), and, at the right, my iPad in 2017 taking a photo of our ancient Apple II (which we purchased in 1978, a year after it was introduced).

I use my iPad almost every day for my "fun" computer tasks because it is light, convenient, and turns on instantly. However, almost all my "serious" computer tasks, such as PowerPoint presentations and Blog posts, are done with Windows laptops. My Android cell-phone is my ultra-portable camera as well as my multi-purpose alarm clock and Web Surfer. Oh, and I sometimes use it to make phone calls are send and receive texts!

STEVE JOBS Product Philosophy: 
Technology must be joined with great design, elegance, human touches, … quality. Graphical user interfaces, varied fonts, stark simplicity ...

SELECTED QUOTATIONS

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

"It just works."

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.“Quality is much better than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.”

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. 
You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

“That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

“Of all the inventions of humans, the computer is going to rank near or at the top as history unfolds and we look back. It is the most awesome tool that we have ever invented. 
I feel incredibly lucky to be at exactly the right place in Silicon Valley, at exactly the right time, historically, where this invention has taken form.”

“… it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. 
"The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. 
"It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

Steve JOBS' ILLNESS AND DEATH IN 2011 AT AGE 56

In 2003 he was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer and he chose  alternative treatment for 9 months

In 2006 he was “thin, almost gaunt” presenting at Apple Conference

Up until and including 2008 misleading health statements were circulated

In 2009 Jobs received a Liver transplant

In 2011, on October 5th, Jobs died at his Palo Alto home due to relapse of pancreatic cancer. 

Ira Glickstein

Law, Jurisprudence, and Revolution in Islam

[From Mark Welton, based on his excellent presentation to The Villages Philosophy Club, Florida, 08 May 2015, Powerpoint available HERE. Photo above, Jameh Mosque, Yadz, Iran]

Often heard today is that the Quran contains many verses authorizing, or justifying, violence, and therefore Islam is an inherently violent religion.  This is both simplistic and wrong.

First, a hypothetical case often used in jurisprudence courses (including my own at West Point).  President Reagan said that the one law everyone needs to follow is the Ten Commandments (he did say this).  One declares “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”  Mr. Jones, a businessman, offered $10,000 to any of his married employees who obeyed this law for at least ten years.  After ten years, three couples came to Mr. Jones to claim their reward.

The first couple told Mr. Jones that the wife had never had relations with any other man after marriage, but the husband had had numerous affairs.  Nevertheless, the husband stated that when this commandment was given to Moses, Talmudic law (indeed all law throughout the Near East) held that adultery could only be committed by wives.  Married men could have as many partners as they desired without committing adultery [this is in fact correct].  Thus this commandment should be interpreted as it was understood by everyone at the time it was revealed, and the couple should receive the money since no adultery had been committed.

Should they?  (hint:  US Supreme Court Justice Scalia might say yes; laws are to be interpreted as they were understood when issued, and if people don’t like the results, the laws should be changed through democratic means, not by judicial interpretation.  But Justice Breyer would probably say no, laws are to be interpreted as they are understood by contemporary society).

The second couple told Mr. Jones that they both had many affairs after their marriage, but it was an open marriage, there was no deceit, and they loved each other and their children as much now as when they got married.  Since the purpose of the law against adultery is to preserve and strengthen the family, this purpose was met, and they should receive the money.

Should they?  (hint:  some judges today do not convict people for shoplifting if they exit a store without paying if they can demonstrate that they honestly forgot that they had the item, since the purpose of the law is to deter intentional theft, not punish innocent carelessness).

The final couple told Mr. Jones that neither of them had had any partners other than their spouses since they married.  The husband admitted, however, that he had occasionally looked at other women and felt desire, though he had never acted on that feeling.

Should they receive the money?  (hint:  the Gospel of Matthew, Pope John Paul, and Jimmy Carter have all stated that anyone who looks with lust on another person has committed adultery in their heart).

Regardless of your own opinion in these cases,  it should be evident that no law, however “clear,” has only one single possible interpretation or “plain meaning.”  Laws, like religious texts, need authorities to interpret and apply them in various situations (e.g., judges and Supreme Court Justices for U.S .law and the Constitution, the Pope for Roman Catholic doctrine, and rabbis for Talmudic law).  These authorities apply many different methodologies to interpret texts.  They also often change their interpretations over time, and they often disagree among themselves.  The process of interpreting texts (exegesis, or more broadly hermeneutics) is complex and always evolving, but never simple.

This is no different when interpreting the Quran.  The difficulty in Islam (more so for Sunnis than for Shiites) is that there is no single person or group like a Pope or a Supreme Court with authority to say what the current best interpretation of a passage in the Quran or other text should be.  Thus some “cherry pick” verses; that is, they pluck them out of the text and apply their own interpretations to justify their personal or political aims, disregarding the entire corpus of hermeneutics that has developed around them (this is called proof texting).

However, the majority of Muslims, both scholars and others, seek a more authentic contextual interpretation of the Quran and other texts so as to make them meaningful to their lives.

For example, the so-called “sword verse” (“so when the sacred months have passed away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them”) is sometimes cited to demonstrate that the Quran advocates violence.  But according to virtually all scholarly accounts, this verse was revealed late in the Prophet’s life when the small community of Muslims at Medina was under attack by the Meccans (who worshipped the many idols in the Kaaba, and were hence “idolaters”).  In the view of many who apply historical context and various other interpretive methods to this passage, when that threat ended with the surrender of the Meccans and other polytheists in the region, the non-historically constrained principles of the Quran that command respect for the other monotheistic faiths, and the exhortation that peace is better than fighting except in self-defense, take precedence over this historically conditioned verse.

This is just one illustration of the obvious point that passages extracted from the foundational texts of any legal system or religion can never be understood as having a single “plain meaning.”  Grammar, semantics, pragmatics, historicity, and other linguistic and related considerations and approaches are all necessary in interpreting the Quran, or for that matter any other foundational text.  The Quran and other textual sources of Islam have undergone centuries of study and interpretation by scholars (ulama) who sometimes, like the US Supreme Court, disagree among themselves, and who have evolved different understandings over time about the meaning of a given text.*  It was this process that created the religious/legal foundation of Muslim societies until relatively recently.

That foundation has now ruptured, with conflict, violence and extremism in some parts of the Islamic world, with many historical, social, political, and economic causes.  But to assert that Islam is an inherently violent religion because the Quran or the Sunnah clearly (or “plainly”) state such and such about fighting and violence (or any other matter) is inaccurate.

*To extract from the Quran and other texts principles and rules of Islam and Islamic law, scholars have traditionally applied numerous interpretive techniques, including al-dalalat (textual implications), naskh (abrogation), ijma (consensus), qiyas (analogical reasoning), istihsan (equity), istishab (presumption of continuity), sadd al-dhara’i (blocking the means), maslahaha (public interest), and many others.  There is nothing simple or obvious about this process.

If Islam is not intrinsically violent (see above discussion on interpreting the Quran), why is there now so much conflict in the Middle East (and in some other Islamic areas and communities)?  Obviously there is no single answer, as history, politics, economics, and religion all play a role.  But an important factor, a broader context in which these events are unfolding, is the current Islamic revolution.

In his two volume “Law and Revolution,” Harold Berman described the modern West as the product of six great revolutions: the Papal Revolution (1075-1122), the German Revolution(1517-1555) (also called the Reformation), the English Revolution (1640-1685), the French and American Revolutions of the late 18^th century, and the (only partly successful) Russian Revolution of the early 20^th century.  These were true revolutions in that each ultimately affected every aspect of society (economically, politically, legally, religiously, and culturally).  Like the process of scientific revolutions described by Thomas Kuhn in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” they erupted when existing societies could no longer assimilate or constrain new economic, political, legal, religious and cultural ideas and forces.  They were total revolutions as they created new forms of government, new structures of economic, social, legal and state-church relations, new perspectives on history and new sets of values and beliefs.  Importantly for this discussion, each revolution was marked by violence and war; each sought legitimacy in a remote past; each took more than one generation to take root; and each eventually reverted in part to its pre-revolutionary past but also evolved in new ways thereafter.  The modern West is a product of these revolutions.

The Muslim world has undergone two such revolutions.  The first was in the 7^th century ce, when the Prophet Muhammad turned the Arab world upside down.  Islam required equality instead of privilege, community instead of tribalism, monotheism instead of polytheism, law instead of private vengeance.  Like the western revolutions, this period was marked by war and violence (during the Prophet’s lifetime and in the subsequent Riddah wars), grounded itself on continuity with the past monotheistic prophetic tradition of the Near East (Judaism and Christianity), took several generations (roughly three centuries) to take root, and reverted in part to pre-Islamic patterns of tribalism, kingship, privilege and local customs, all of which were nevertheless transformed thereafter by the revolutionary ideas of Islam.

Most important, the religious/legal scholars (ulama), not the rulers, gained control of the formulation and interpretation of Islamic law, which to a remarkable degree (for the times) protected the people against the excesses of kings, sultans, and other rulers, and forced those rulers, whose task was to enforce rather than create the core religious law, to abide by that law and to restrain their arbitrary power (or they would lose legitimacy and thus the source of their power).  The “golden age” of Islam in science, literature, arts and commerce was made possible in large part by this basic “rule of law.”  

In the 19^th and 20^th centuries this system collapsed.  (Why the Muslim world, unlike the West, did not experience other revolutions after the era of the Prophet has many reasons; see Bernard Lewis’ “What Went Wrong” and Timur Kuran’s “The Long Divergence” for some of these reasons).  Beginning around 1800, nearly all of the Islamic world was colonized by European powers, especially by the British, French, and Dutch.  The Islamic law and its morality was almost completely replaced by western law and colonial government, partly because European colonialists desired a political and legal system more favorable to their economic and imperial interests, and partly because many Muslim reformers believed that European law was necessary for modernization.  The authority of the ulama and Islamic law disappeared, save in a few areas such as family matters, and was replaced by western legal codes and procedures, with rulers chosen or approved by the colonial powers.

The era of overt colonialism ended in the 20^th century, especially after World War II.  As the Europeans left, the void was filled by various political movements: national socialists (e.g., Nasser in Egypt, the Ba’athists in Iraq and Syria), modernists (e.g., Ataturk in Turkey and Reza Shah in Iran), and others.  These were authoritarian and dictatorial, but unlike the classical era (and even under the Ottomans) there was no longer the ulama with their religious/legal authority to restrain them.  The rulers themselves now “owned” the law, had almost absolute power, but with some exceptions failed to deliver the kinds of societies most people expected.

The collapse of the old order, the effects of colonialism, the failures of political leadership, and the imposition of modernity on traditional societies led to societal pressures and fissures that, like each of the western revolutions, finally erupted in the second Islamic Revolution, beginning in 1979 in Iran and continuing throughout much of the Middle East and North Africa today.  Like the western revolutions (especially the German one, leading many commentators like Robin Wright and Reza Aslan to term the current revolution an “Islamic Reformation”), it is accompanied by violence, and a search by some for a return to the remote founding era of the Prophet (e.g., by the Salafists), or at least by many others to the “traditional” mores and values of Islam (e.g., in dress and religious observance).

Like the German and English Revolutions, when translations and dissemination of the Bible broke the exclusive power of the Church to interpret and proclaim its meaning, translations of the Quran and other Islamic texts from the old Arabic which few could read (especially the vast majority of Muslims who are not Arabs) into modern languages, and their spread through modern media like the internet and TV, have enabled everyone to read, interpret, and sometimes proclaim their own views of those texts.  New figures have emerged to engage ordinary Muslims with their faith in the modern world (such as popular Muslim “televangelists” like Moez Masoud and Amr Khaled), or to claim leadership of the revolution, ranging from modernists like the Gülen movement to radical “puritans” like Osama bin Laden.

History does not repeat itself, nor is it a predictor of future events or outcomes.  But like the great western revolutions it is likely that the current Islamic revolution, already characterized by violence and a reference to its remote past, will take more than one generation to play out and take root, and will absorb existing traditions and patterns, but will imprint those traditions and patterns with revolutionary ideas.  The results will take different forms in different places, but the process will transform the Islamic world in every respect.

Dr. Mark David Welton

Professor Emeritus

United States Military Academy, West Point

Aside from the books and authors mentioned above, all of whom are well worth reading, an excellent and relatively short book on this subject is Noah Feldman’s “The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State.”