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I confess that I started with Hazleton's work last year but couldn't get past the first 50 pages because of sheer distaste. In my humble view, it is not history, rather some kind of a hotch-potch for amusement of some people who could relate better with her style. I mean anyone even reading the start of third para on first page would understand the the kind of broad brush Hazleton is employing here:

"The very people who had once opposed Muhammad and plotted to kill him were now among his senior aides."

One wonders, is it so? Really? Who says it, any single reference? One doesn't even need to rebut such monolithic constructs. To me this was enough but I still forced myself to read a few more pages. In the end, for serious readers, its simply a waste of time. Of course, no disrespect intended to those who loved the book. I am still amazed what gives Hazleton the academic right to make such tasteless speculations, for instance,

"Perhaps, then, the multiply married Prophet was celibate."

And one is forced to give a shrug and throw the book away. As I said, its not history, its a comic book version of what Hazleton might have thought while going through various sources.

I can only recommend anyone who is interested in the history proper to get into some serious sources, rather than so-called 'stories' of historical conflicts. And I am not talking about traditional sources opinionated with various religious biases, rather modern sources such as Hodgson's Venture of Islam (Vol I/II) or Dabashi's Shiism, A Religion of Protest. Of course there are serious Sunni and Shia works like Abu Zuhra's or Musa Mosavi's. Juxtaposing such serious works with someone like Hazleton's would obviously clarify the weaknesses of latter, which albeit popularizing history builds a very simplistic view for naive and less informed readers.