Civilization : the west and the rest / Niall Ferguson.
Material type: TextPublication details: London ; New York : Allen Lane, c2011.Description: xxx, 402 p., [24] p. of plates : ill. (some col.), charts, maps ; 24 cmISBN:- 1846142733
- 9781846142734
- 909.08 FER
Item type | Current library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Standard Loan | Moylish Library Main Collection | 909.08 FER (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 39002100404764 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
If in the year 1411 you had been able to circumnavigate the globe, you would have been most impressed by the dazzling civilizations of the Orient. The Forbidden City was under construction in Ming Beijing; in the Near East, the Ottomans were closing in on Constantinople.
By contrast, England would have struck you as a miserable backwater ravaged by plague, bad sanitation and incessant war. The other quarrelsome kingdoms of Western Europe - Aragon, Castile, France, Portugal and Scotland - would have seemed little better. The idea that the West would come to dominate the Rest for most of the next half millennium would have struck you as wildly fanciful. And yet it happened.
What was it about the civilization of Western Europe that allowed it to trump the outwardly superior empires of the Orient? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, was that the West developed six 'killer applications' that the Rest lacked- competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic.
The key question today is whether or not the West has lost its monopoly on these six things. If so, Ferguson warns, we may be living through the end of Western ascendancy.
Civilization takes readers on their own extraordinary journey around the world - from the Grand Canal at Nanjing to the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul; from Machu Picchu in the Andes to Shark Island, Namibia; from the proud towers of Prague to the secret churches of Wenzhou. It is the story of sailboats, missiles, land deeds, vaccines, blue jeans and Chinese Bibles. It is the defining narrative of modern world history.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 348-378) and index.
What was it about the civilization of Western Europe that allowed it to trump the outwardly superior empires of the Orient? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, was that the West developed six killer applications?that the Rest lacked: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. The key question today is whether or not the West has lost its monopoly on these six things. If so, Ferguson warns, we may be living through the end of Western ascendancy.
Table of contents provided by Syndetics
- List of Illustrations (p. ix)
- List of Maps (p. xii)
- List of Figures (p. xiii)
- Preface to the UK Edition (p. xv)
- Introduction: Rasselas's Question (p. 1)
- 1 Competition (p. 19)
- Two Rivers (p. 20)
- The Eunuch and the Unicorn (p. 26)
- The Spice Race (p. 33)
- The Mediocre Kingdom (p. 44)
- 2 Science (p. 50)
- The Siege (p. 50)
- Micrographia (p. 60)
- Osman and Fritz (p. 71)
- Tanzimat Tours (p. 85)
- From Istanbul to Jerusalem (p. 90)
- 3 Property (p. 96)
- New Worlds (p. 96)
- Land of the Free (p. 103)
- American Revolutions (p. 115)
- The Fate of the Gullahs (p. 125)
- 4 Medicine (p. 141)
- Burke's Prophecy (p. 142)
- The Juggernaut of War (p. 157)
- Médecins Sans Frontieres (p. 168)
- The Skulls of Shark Island (p. 175)
- Black Shame (p. 185)
- 5 Consumption (p. 196)
- The Birth of the Consumer Society (p. 196)
- Turning Western (p. 218)
- Ragtime to Riches (p. 227)
- The Jeans Genie (p. 240)
- Pyjamas and Scarves (p. 252)
- 6 Work (p. 256)
- Work Ethic and Word Ethic (p. 256)
- Get your Kicks (p. 265)
- The Chinese Jerusalem (p. 277)
- Lands of Unbelief (p. 288)
- The End of Days? (p. 291)
- Conclusion: The Rivals (p. 295)
- Notes (p. 326)
- Bibliography (p. 348)
- Index (p. 379)
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Author notes provided by Syndetics
Niall Ferguson was born April 18, 1964, in Glasgow. He is a Scottish historian. He specializes in financial and economic history as well as the history of empire. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.His books include Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927 (1993), Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (1997), The Pity of War: Explaining World War One (1998), The World's Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild (1998), The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 (2001), Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (2003), Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (2004), The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006) and The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (2008), Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011) , The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, and The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook.
(Bowker Author Biography)