This really is a fairly good book on the topic...I am not sure if I could say the same for the topic itself.

This book is an argument against and a reply to the seminal work of Edward Said. Mr. MacKenzie makes some original points himself. The book suffers because of poor illustration, and for some strange reason he omits orientalism in literature, even though his work deals with most of the major arts.

MacKenzie's invective against Edward Said's Orientalism reads more like a laundry list of complaints and transgressions than it does a well-reasoned critique of a fundamentally flawed component of the modern imperial historiographic canon. While MacKenzie raises many valid concerns, his rhetoric places him at the mercy of the same critical eye to which he subjects Said. Said, much to his credit, fought an above-board battle, whereas MacKenzie strays frequently down the same ill-fated, spittle-spewing path of Bernard Lewis.

In the nineteenth-century ‘battle of styles’ between Gothic and classical, the Orientalist interest constituted a set of relatively minor, geographically distant and virtually unrelated skirmishes.

MacKenzie's attack on Said comically misunderstands the thing it is he thinks he's attacking, but he must have capitalised handsomely on the title. I myself somehow ended up with two copies.

a great critique

MacKenzie tried to refute the Saidist reading of Orientalist art, but more often than not he seems to be shooting himself in the foot. He has some valid points to be considered, granted, but even those are not enough to save this book.