“WHY THE WEST RULES…FOR NOW”: IAN MORRIS BOOK

August 8, 2010 at 11:55 am | Posted in Books, Development, Globalization, History, World-system | Leave a comment

Why the West Rules … for Now

The History and Future of Development and Disruption

by Ian Morris

Description of Why the West Rules … for Now

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.

About Ian Morris

Ian Morris is Willard Professor of Classics, Professor of History and Director of the Archaeology Centre at Stanford University. He has written and edited a number of books, most recently The Greeks: History, Culture, Society and The Ancient Economy: Evidence and Models, and has appeared on a number of television networks, including the History Network and PBS.

Editorial Reviews

Review
“A formidable, richly engrossing effort to determine why Western institutions dominate the world . . . Readers will enjoy [Morris’s] lively prose and impressive combination of scholarship . . . with economics and science. A superior contribution to the grand-theory-of-human-history genre” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Ian Morris has returned history to the position it once held: no longer a series of dusty debates, nor simple stories—although he has many stories to tell and tells them brilliantly—but a true magister vitae, ‘teacher of life.’ Morris explains how the shadowy East-West divide came about, why it really does matter, and how one day it might end up. His vision is dazzling, and his prose irresistible. Everyone from Sheffield to Shanghai who wants to know not only how they came to be who and where they are but where their children and their children’s children might one day end up must read this book.” —Anthony Pagden, author of Worlds and War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West

“This is an astonishing work by Ian Morris: hundreds of pages of the latest information dealing with every aspect of change. Then, the questions of the future: What will a new distribution bring about? Will Europe undergo a major change? Will the millions of immigrants impose a new set of rules on the rest? There was a time when Europe could absorb any and all newcomers. Now the newcomers may dictate the terms. The West may continue to rule, but the rule may be very different.” —David S. Landes, author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations

“Here you have three books wrapped into one: an exciting novel that happens to be true; an entertaining but thorough historical account of everything important that happened to any important people in the last ten millennia; and an educated guess about what will happen in the future. Read, learn, and enjoy!” —Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography at UCLA, and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse, and Natural Experiments of History

“Ian Morris is a classical archaeologist, an ancient historian, and a writer whose breathtaking vision and scope make him fit to be ranked alongside the likes of Jared Diamond and David Landes. His magnum opus is a tour not just d’horizon but de force, taking us on a spectacular journey to and from the two nodal cores of the Euramerican West and the Asian East, alighting and reflecting as suggestively upon 10,800 BC as upon AD 2010. The shape of globalizing history may well never be quite the same again.” —Paul Cartledge, A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, Clare College

“At last—a brilliant historian with a light touch. We should all rejoice.” —John Julius Norwich

“Deeply thought-provoking and engagingly lively, broad in sweep and precise in detail.” —Jonathan Fenby, author of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present

“Morris’s history of world dominance sparkles as much with exotic ideas as with extraordinary tales. Why the West Rules—for Now is both a riveting drama and a major step toward an integrated theory of history.” —Richard Wrangham, author of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

“The nearest thing to a unified field theory of history we are ever likely to get. With wit and wisdom, Ian Morris deploys the techniques and insights of the new ancient history to address the biggest of all historical questions: Why on earth did the West beat the Rest? I loved it.” —Niall Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money

Product Description

Sometime around 1750, English entrepreneurs unleashed the astounding energies of steam and coal, and the world was forever changed. The emergence of factories, railroads, and gunboats propelled the West’s rise to power in the nineteenth century, and the development of computers and nuclear weapons in the twentieth century secured its global supremacy. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, many worry that the emerging economic power of China and India spells the end of the West as a superpower. In order to understand this possibility, we need to look back in time. Why has the West dominated the globe for the past two hundred years, and will its power last?

Describing the patterns of human history, the archaeologist and historian Ian Morris offers surprising new answers to both questions. It is not, he reveals, differences of race or culture, or even the strivings of great individuals, that explain Western dominance. It is the effects of geography on the everyday efforts of ordinary people as they deal with crises of resources, disease, migration, and climate. As geography and human ingenuity continue to interact, the world will change in astonishing ways, transforming Western rule in the process.

Deeply researched and brilliantly argued, Why the West Rules—for Now spans fifty thousand years of history and offers fresh insights on nearly every page. The book brings together the latest findings across disciplines—from ancient history to neuroscience—not only to explain why the West came to rule the world but also to predict what the future will bring in the next hundred years.

Product Details:

Hardcover: 768 pages

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Date: October 12 2010

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0374290024

ISBN-13: 978-0374290023

Why the West Rules … for Now

The History and Future of Development and Disruption

by Ian Morris