The book's thesis is that throughout recent history, specifically beginning with the failure of the second Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, the Islamic world has failed to modernize or to keep pace with the Western world in a variety of respects, and that this failure has been seen by many within the Islamic world as having allowed Western powers to acquire a disastrous position of dominance over those regions. The book also details other various shortcomings of modernization in the Islamic world, such as general resistance to constructing public clocks, lack of standardized linear measurements, and pervasive autocracy.

External links

• The original article (Abstract plus first two paragraphs)
• Description by the Oxford University Press
• Ismail Küpeli: Was ging schief beim 'Untergang des Morgenlandes'? Eine exemplarische Sichtung der Geschichtsdarstellung von Bernard Lewis. München, 2007, ISBN 978-3638754576 (Critical book about "What Went Wrong" in German)