How the World Made the West
By Josephine Quinn
By Josephine Quinn
By Josephine Quinn
By Josephine Quinn
By Josephine Quinn
Read by Alix Dunmore
By Josephine Quinn
Read by Alix Dunmore
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$38.00
Sep 03, 2024 | ISBN 9780593729793
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Sep 03, 2024 | ISBN 9780593729816
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Sep 03, 2024 | ISBN 9780593913352
948 Minutes
Buy the Audiobook Download:
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Praise
“Compelling . . . The book makes a forceful argument and tells a story with great verve: Classical Greece and Rome owed an enormous cultural debt to the societies that preceded them and surrounded them. Therefore, notions that these cultures are the sole and direct ancient progenitors of the modern West are blinkered. We need a new kind of ancient history. . . . Ms. Quinn’s book points to a possible path forward, toward a more expansive version of ancient history.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Those archaic ‘Western Civ’ classes so many of us took in college should be updated, argues Quinn, an Oxford professor of ancient history. She invites us to widen our scope and see the influence of Phoenicia, Assyria, and India, and to revel in a richer, more polyglot inheritance.”—The Boston Globe
“Josephine Quinn ranges wide with [her] broad survey of world history. The Oxford history professor shows how the West has always been remarkably global, detailing examples from the past 4000 years if you doubt it. Your high school teacher may have said it all began with Greece and Rome. But Greece and Rome knew how much they learned by interacting with the rest of the world. From Arabic scholarship (surely we all know their primacy in maths) to Assyrian irrigation, the countless examples of ideas beginning in one place and soon darting all over the world are fascinating.”—Parade
“As our leaders and pundits glorify ‘Western Civilization’ and excoriate migration and wokeness, Josephine Quinn offers a momentous correction: the Greeks and Romans were hodgepodge people, and if we are their heirs it is only because of globe-spanning connections that always produce multifarious ways of life. . . . Brilliant and essential.”—Samuel Moyn, author of Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times
“Bold, beautifully written, and filled with insights, How the World Made the West demands that we challenge traditional views of the past. An extraordinary achievement.”—Peter Frankopan, bestselling author of The Earth Transformed
“One of the most fascinating works of global history to appear for many years . . . incredibly ambitious and wide-ranging . . . allowing us to understand just how globalized and interconnected mankind has always been.”—William Dalrymple, bestselling author of The Anarchy
“Engaging, aspirational, and inspirational, How the World Made the West will be devoured by history buffs and should be required reading for those arguing for the supremacy of ‘Western Civilization’ as well as those arguing for its demise and dismantling, and everyone in between.”—Eric Cline, author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed
“The book traces the stories of an imposing array of different early cultures, always focusing on their relations with others and how each of them drew on their predecessors and contemporaries. Quinn makes a point of reexamining many of the familiar landmarks of ancient history. . . . Even readers with a fairly good knowledge of history are likely to learn something new. . . . A fascinating look at world history from the broadest possible perspective.”—Kirkus Review, starred review
Table Of Contents
Notes to the Reader
Introduction
1. A Single Sail
2. The Palace of Minos
3. The Amber Routes
4. The Erupting Sea
5. Band of Brothers
6. Alphabet City
7. Regime Change
8. I Am Not Your Servant
9. Through the Pillars
10. The Invention of Greece
11. The Assyrian Mediterranean
12. He Who Saw the Deep
13. The Bitter River
14. The King of Kings
15. The Persian Version
16. Continental Thinking
17. Of Elephants and Kings
18. Clouds in the West
19. Fighting for Freedom
20. Rome, Open City
21. Trade Winds
22. Salt Roads
23. The Rise of the Barbarians
24. Kings of the World
25. The Father of Europe
26. The Translation Movement
27. The Sign of the Cross
28. Kalila wa-Dimna
29. The Land of Darkness
30. A New World
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
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