Introduces Presidents' Day, explaining the historical events behind it, how it became a holiday, and how it is observed.

An Afghan American writer, most recently known for an e-mail on reprisals against Afghanistan, shares his experiences of Islam and the West, his feelings on Islamic militant fundamentalism, and his hopes for reconciliation

Introduces Columbus Day, explaining the historical events behind it, how it became a holiday, and how it is observed.

The Western narrative of world history largely omits a whole civilization. Destiny Disrupted tells the history of the world from the Islamic point of view, and restores the centrality of the Muslim perspective, ignored for a thousand years. In Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary tells the rich story of world history as it looks from a new perspective: with the evolution of the Muslim community at the center. His story moves from the lifetime of Mohammed...

"A sweeping global human history that describes the separate beginnings of the world's major civilizations and cultural movements -- Confuscianism, Islam, Judeo-Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Nomadism -- and the dramatic, sometimes ruinous, sometimes transformative effects of their ever closer intertwinement that has brought us to where we are today"--