'The history of the West is not quite what you learned in school'

[Nearly Sane]

A rather over excited review from The Economist of the book How the World Made the West by Josephine Quinn. Inyeresting that the concept of 'civilisations' is wrong but 'cultures' are fine.

I'm always worried about something when for a mark of quality people cite the amount of footnotes.


https://archive.is/EeEX4

[jeremyp]

From reading the review (I will probably never get round to reading the book), the thesis seems reasonable. The problem is, I think, that the idea she attacks:

it [is] impossible to understand history without classifying humanity into mutually hostile civilisations between which, “during most of human existence”, contact has been “intermittent or non-existent”.

is something of a straw man.