Civilization, Niall Ferguson
Civilization, Niall Ferguson
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Civilization
The West and the Rest

Author: Niall Ferguson

Narrator: Niall Ferguson

Unabridged: 13 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/01/2011


Synopsis

The rise to global predominance of Western civilization is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five hundred years. All over the world, an astonishing proportion of people now work for Western-style companies, study at Western-style universities, vote for Western-style governments, take Western medicines, wear Western clothes, and even work Western hours. Yet six hundred years ago the petty kingdoms of Western Europe seemed unlikely to achieve much more than perpetual internecine warfare. It was Ming China or Ottoman Turkey that had the look of world civilizations. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed?

In Civilization: The West and the Rest, bestselling author Niall Ferguson argues that, beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts that the Rest lacked: competition, science, the rule of law, consumerism, modern medicine, and the work ethic. These were the "killer applications" that allowed the West to leap ahead of the Rest, opening global trade routes, exploiting newly discovered scientific laws, evolving a system of representative government, more than doubling life expectancy, unleashing the Industrial Revolution, and embracing a dynamic work ethic. Civilization shows just how fewer than a dozen Western empires came to control more than half of humanity and four fifths of the world economy.

Yet now, Ferguson argues, the days of Western predominance are numbered—not because of clashes with rival civilizations, but simply because the Rest have now downloaded the six killer apps we once monopolized—while the West has literally lost faith in itself.

Civilization does more than tell the gripping story of the West's slow rise and sudden demise; it also explains world history with verve, clarity, and wit. Controversial but cogent and compelling, Civilization is Ferguson at his very best.

About Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University; the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School; a senior research fellow of Jesus College, Oxford; and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford. The bestselling author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire, Colossus, and The War of the World, he is also a contributing editor of the Financial Times. Since 2003, he has written and presented three highly successful television documentary series for British television: Empire, American Colossus, and, most recently, The War of the World. He and his family divide their time between the United Kingdom and the United States.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul on July 22, 2013

THE ACTUAL REVIEW AS OPPOSED TO THE COMPLAINT ABOUT THE TITLE Niall Ferguson is exhausting. He leaps, darts, pirhouettes, swandives, uses statistics as Molotov cocktails, he quotes, he hectors, he nudges, he booms, he hollers, he balances, he bulldozes, his book is like 500 years of history considere......more

Goodreads review by Sir Jack on April 10, 2015

Western civilization, the West. Decades ago, Edward Said noted Western Europe’s tendency to claim Greek, Roman, and even aspects of Egyptian civilization as its own. The Roman Empire has long been seen (perhaps anachronistically) by the West as a “Western” phenomenon, but it could instead be seen as......more

Goodreads review by James on July 02, 2012

This is a story that can be told in many ways. It's history, a history of the European dominance in world affairs and the reasons for it. It's geopolitics told through Ferguson's prism which receives the vast record of European history during the last several hundred years and projects it into a pat......more

Goodreads review by Anthony on June 24, 2024

On the Decent. Niall Ferguson’s Civilization documents the rise and decline of Western Civilization as the dominant cultural and economic power in the world. He asserts that if you were to ask someone who lived in the world in 1500 who would be the greatest power in the world in 2000, non would have......more

Goodreads review by Vaishali on February 11, 2021

A must-read for history buffs. Surprisingly, the most interesting stats are on China. Ferguson loses credibility only when opining that tall height is a western introduction. (Colonial New England diarists habitually recount 6 foot native men, and Maasai male warriors average just under 7 ft.) Wow m......more