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Author: Paul Collins
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 161039013X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 498
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Book Description
A narrative history of the origins of Western civilization argues that Europe was transformed in the tenth century from a continent rife with violence and ignorance to a continent on the rise.
Author: Paul Collins
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 161039013X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 498
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Book Description
A narrative history of the origins of Western civilization argues that Europe was transformed in the tenth century from a continent rife with violence and ignorance to a continent on the rise.
Author: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 154177440X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 339
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Book Description
In the tradition of Why Nations Fail, this book solves one of the great puzzles of history: Why did the West become the most powerful civilization in the world? Western exceptionalism—the idea that European civilizations are freer, wealthier, and less violent—is a widespread and powerful political idea. It has been a source of peace and prosperity in some societies, and of ethnic cleansing and havoc in others. Yet in The Invention of Power, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita draws on his expertise in political maneuvering, deal-making, and game theory to present a revolutionary new theory of Western exceptionalism: that a single, rarely discussed event in the twelfth century changed the course of European and world history. By creating a compromise between churches and nation-states that, in effect, traded money for power and power for money, the 1122 Concordat of Worms incentivized economic growth, facilitated secularization, and improved the lot of the citizenry, all of which set European countries on a course for prosperity. In the centuries since, countries that have had a similar dynamic of competition between church and state have been consistently better off than those that have not. The Invention of Power upends conventional thinking about European culture, religion, and race and presents a persuasive new vision of world history.
Author: Peter Heather
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199752729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 754
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Book Description
Empires and Barbarians presents a fresh, provocative look at how a recognizable Europe came into being in the first millennium AD. With sharp analytic insight, Peter Heather explores the dynamics of migration and social and economic interaction that changed two vastly different worlds--the undeveloped barbarian world and the sophisticated Roman Empire--into remarkably similar societies and states. The book's vivid narrative begins at the time of Christ, when the Mediterranean circle, newly united under the Romans, hosted a politically sophisticated, economically advanced, and culturally developed civilization--one with philosophy, banking, professional armies, literature, stunning architecture, even garbage collection. The rest of Europe, meanwhile, was home to subsistence farmers living in small groups, dominated largely by Germanic speakers. Although having some iron tools and weapons, these mostly illiterate peoples worked mainly in wood and never built in stone. The farther east one went, the simpler it became: fewer iron tools and ever less productive economies. And yet ten centuries later, from the Atlantic to the Urals, the European world had turned. Slavic speakers had largely superseded Germanic speakers in central and Eastern Europe, literacy was growing, Christianity had spread, and most fundamentally, Mediterranean supremacy was broken. Bringing the whole of first millennium European history together, and challenging current arguments that migration played but a tiny role in this unfolding narrative, Empires and Barbarians views the destruction of the ancient world order in light of modern migration and globalization patterns.
Author: Jean Bottéro
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226067155
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
At the same time Ancestor of the West reminds us that these cultures were precursors of our own precisely because they possessed an intelligence that we still recognize. The ancients, even in their earliest writings, thought like us."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Hyun Jin Kim
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107067227
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
The Huns have often been treated as primitive barbarians with no advanced political organisation. Their place of origin was the so-called 'backward steppe'. It has been argued that whatever political organisation they achieved they owed to the 'civilizing influence' of the Germanic peoples they encountered as they moved west. This book argues that the steppes of Inner Asia were far from 'backward' and that the image of the primitive Huns is vastly misleading. They already possessed a highly sophisticated political culture while still in Inner Asia and, far from being passive recipients of advanced culture from the West, they passed on important elements of Central Eurasian culture to early medieval Europe, which they helped create. Their expansion also marked the beginning of a millennium of virtual monopoly of world power by empires originating in the steppes of Inner Asia. The rise of the Hunnic Empire was truly a geopolitical revolution.
Author: Richard Pilkington
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774862009
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
In 1971, authorities in Islamabad perpetrated mass atrocities in East Pakistan in an attempt to thwart a struggle for autonomy by terrorizing the local population into submission. The West and the Birth of Bangladesh explores the decision-making processes and ethical debates in Washington, Ottawa, and London during the crucial first few months of the crisis. US president Richard Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, favoured appeasement of Islamabad. The Canadian government was unwilling to hazard bilateral ties with Pakistan. Under public pressure, only the UK showed somewhat greater willingness to coerce Islamabad into ending its oppressive actions. Richard Pilkington analyzes the interplay of US, Canadian, and British responses toward East Pakistan, and the available policy options. This insightful book reveals how, even as human rights movements began to emerge in the West, blinkered government actors there remained too preoccupied with protecting national interests to take firm action during the crisis.
Author: Simon Price
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110147579X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 479
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Book Description
An innovative and intriguing look at the foundations of Western civilization from two leading historians; the first volume in the Penguin History of Europe The influence of ancient Greece and Rome can be seen in every aspect of our lives. From calendars to democracy to the very languages we speak, Western civilization owes a debt to these classical societies. Yet the Greeks and Romans did not emerge fully formed; their culture grew from an active engagement with a deeper past, drawing on ancient myths and figures to shape vibrant civilizations. In The Birth of Classical Europe, the latest entry in the much-acclaimed Penguin History of Europe, historians Simon Price and Peter Thonemann present a fresh perspective on classical culture in a book full of revelations about civilizations we thought we knew. In this impeccably researched and immensely readable history we see the ancient world unfold before us, with its grand cast of characters stretching from the great Greeks of myth to the world-shaping Caesars. A landmark achievement, The Birth of Classical Europe provides insight into an epoch that is both incredibly foreign and surprisingly familiar.
Author: Ian Morris
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 1551995816
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 767
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Book Description
Why does the West rule? In this magnum opus, eminent Stanford polymath Ian Morris answers this provocative question, drawing on 50,000 years of history, archeology, and the methods of social science, to make sense of when, how, and why the paths of development differed in the East and West — and what this portends for the 21st century. There are two broad schools of thought on why the West rules. Proponents of "Long-Term Lock-In" theories such as Jared Diamond suggest that from time immemorial, some critical factor — geography, climate, or culture perhaps — made East and West unalterably different, and determined that the industrial revolution would happen in the West and push it further ahead of the East. But the East led the West between 500 and 1600, so this development can't have been inevitable; and so proponents of "Short-Term Accident" theories argue that Western rule was a temporary aberration that is now coming to an end, with Japan, China, and India resuming their rightful places on the world stage. However, as the West led for 9,000 of the previous 10,000 years, it wasn't just a temporary aberration. So, if we want to know why the West rules, we need a whole new theory. Ian Morris, boldly entering the turf of Jared Diamond and Niall Ferguson, provides the broader approach that is necessary, combining the textual historian's focus on context, the anthropological archaeologist's awareness of the deep past, and the social scientist's comparative methods to make sense of the past, present, and future — in a way no one has ever done before.
Author: Robert R. Dykstra
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700624767
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247
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Book Description
Raised on Gunsmoke, Bat Masterson, and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, we know what it means to “get outta Dodge”—to make a hasty escape from a dangerous place, like the Dodge City of Wild West lore. But why, of all the notorious, violent cities of old, did Dodge win this distinction? And what does this tenacious cultural metaphor have to do with the real Dodge City? In a book as much about the making of cultural myths as it is about Dodge City itself, authors Robert Dykstra and Jo Ann Manfra take us back into the history of Dodge to trace the growth of the city and its legend side-by-side. An exploration of murder statistics, court cases, and contemporary accounts reveals the historical Dodge to be neither as violent nor as lawless as legend has it—but every bit as intriguing. In a style that captures the charm and chicanery of storytelling in the Old West, Dodge City and the Birth of the Wild West finds a culprit in a local attorney, Harry Gryden, who fed sensational accounts to the national media during the so-called "Dodge City War" of 1883. Once launched, the legend leads the authors through the cultural landscape of twentieth-century America, as Dodge City became a useful metaphor in more and more television series and movies. Meanwhile, back in the actual Dodge, struggling on a lost frontier, a mirror image of the mythical city began to emerge, as residents increasingly embraced tourism as an economic necessity. Dodge City and the Birth of the Wild West maps a metaphor for belligerent individualism and social freedom through the cultural imagination, from a historical starting point to its mythical reflection. In this, the book restores both the reality of Dodge and its legend to their rightful place in the continuum of American culture.
Author: Stephen Beebe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780853986294
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
From the French Revolution to the 21st century, from the Tablets to the Kings to the institute process, this book offers a perspective on the significance of Bahá'u'lláh's Revelation for the spiritual empowerment of the masses as protagonists of their own advancement.
