REMINDED.

Muslims don't brag. But don't force us to remind you.

Every morning, the world wakes up inside Muslim inventions - and does not know it. The coffee in the cup. The hospital down the road. The algebra in the classroom, the university itself, the soap, the cheque, the pointed arch over the cathedral door.

REMINDED. tells the full life stories behind twenty of them: the surgeon of Córdoba whose instruments still gleam in modern operating rooms; the princess of Fez who founded the world's oldest university; the astronomer who taught the world to see; the engineer whose machines ran on water and genius; the musician who set Europe's table and tuned its soul.

These were not accidents of a golden age. They were the harvest of a faith that made knowledge worship and benefit the measure of a life. This book brings the receipts - honestly, legend separated from record - and then asks the only question that matters:

If they built the world once, what is stopping us now?

A. Rahim Sheher-Mulk is the author of UNPLUGGED and The Last Fitna. Born stateless in Johor Bahru, raised in Penang, he writes from Chicago.