Absolutely brilliant and hilarious! Mr. Irwin has authored several novels, and, no doubts, his non-fiction writing has only been improved by that.

So far, I found just a couple of rather strange ... aberrations? (I guess it is appropriate to use that word for a book populated by so many eccentrics). Mr. Irwin writes (pp. 19-20), "For reasons that remain mysterious, the new conquerors [i.e., Arabs] were referred to in the earliest Latin sources either as 'Hagarenes' or as 'Saracens'." I've always thought there's nothing mysterious about that: it's an old tradition of calling an ethnos by a name or place known to classical authors, or by a legendary ancestor. Hagar was mother of Ishmael, the ancestor of the Arabs, hence Hagarians. Saraceni were nomads mentioned by the late Greek authors, so here you go ...

Another example (p. 181): "It always rankled with [Edward] Palmer that he did not succeed to [William] Wright's professorship when the latter died." Something isn't right here. Palmer was murdered in 1882, Wright was succeeded by their mutual friend William Robertson Smith after Wright's death in 1889. With all Orientalists' eccentricity, it seems rather unusual for Palmer to be irritated by a fact that his friend and colleague outlived him.

Despite these minor editorial omissions, I wish could give more than five stars to this book.

As for the sad case of Said's "Orientalism," Mr. Irwin yet again "tore that book to pieces," which, naturally, will have no effect on Said's admirers. As any critique never had and never will on supporters of the "Black Athena," or on believers in the less known here in the West so called "New Chronology."

Read chapter 9, a direct "criticism" of Said's Orientalism, which read more like slander than criticism.

Irwin Begins his book by trying to present a history of orientalism from antiquity until the end of the world war II ( or a bit after). he is doing a good job or as he likes to demonstrate later he does it with " Scholarly methods" until the twenty or so pages on Edward Said and some Scarce number of Islamic Scholars that are among the oppositions of orientalism.
the problem is that i don't necessarily find Said's and other opposing theorists notions on Orientalism accurate but I find that unlike Irwin's claim he has written this book with so much Bias on the matter, Using sarcasm does not make it better it just proves the fact that you are writing with prejudice.
there are some parts that bothers me much:
First is that through out the 9th chapter he constantly points that Said creates a fantasy history about orientalism that did not exist but the problem is that everyone, every individual and every social groups make their own historical narrative exactly as Irwin himself does and if you had not experience it does not give you the permission to ignore it (or maybe it does when you are a White English man living in twenty first century Britain and write about "Arab" literature- even i am writing with Bias.).
second was that when writing about opposing Authors on orientalism he describes them as too emotional not so much rational men that can not be considered scholars.
the third one was ignoring Russian orientalists that done some much and never got credited for-at least in Persianate countries :)))

I mean you can write a book and defend very particular people and views and give your side of the narrative but pretending to be a neutral observer makes it hard to read.

This is a well-crafted but very niche book. The high point comes in chapter 9 (of 10), in which the author shows all the problems with Edward Said's analysis in Orientalism, i.e. the thesis that the intellectual interest of Europeans for the Orient was just one of the arms of the exploitation of the region by the West. Said, it seems, had an "easy way with evidence" (the narrative is more important than the facts). To show that, Irwin dissects all the history and main characters of the study of the Orient by westerns from antiquity to the twentieth century in 8 thorough chapters. For example, he shows that Germany was for a prolonged time the main center for Orientalism in Europe, despite not having direct economic interest in the Middle East or Asia such as mandates or colonies . This seems to be an important counter-example to Said's thesis. In general, a very interesting book, but a little too much of the ivory tower's infighting for my taste.