How the West Won, Rodney Stark
How the West Won, Rodney Stark
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How the West Won
The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

Author: Rodney Stark

Narrator: Kevin Foley

Unabridged: 15 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/27/2014

Synopsis

Modernity developed only in the West—in Europe and North America. Nowhere else did science and democracy arise; nowhere else was slavery outlawed. Only Westerners invented chimneys, musical scores, telescopes, eyeglasses, pianos, electric lights, aspirin, and soap. The question is, why? Unfortunately, that question has become so politically incorrect that most scholars avoid it. But acclaimed author Rodney Stark provides the answers in this sweeping new look at Western civilization.

How the West Won demonstrates the primacy of uniquely Western ideas—among them the belief in free will, the commitment to the pursuit of knowledge, the notion that the universe functions according to rational rules that can be discovered, and the emphasis on human freedom and secure property rights. How the West Won displays Stark's gifts for lively narrative history and making the latest scholarship accessible to all. This bold, insightful book will force you to rethink your understanding of the West and the birth of modernity—and to recognize that Western civilization really has set itself apart from other cultures.

About Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark is the award-winning author of How the West Won, The Victory of Reason, The Rise of Christianity, God's Battalions, and many other books. He serves as Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, where he is codirector of the Institute for Studies of Religion. The recipient of several awards for distinguished scholarship, he is past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and of the Association for the Sociology of Religion.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Noah on January 02, 2021

I have to give credit to How the West Won for being provocative and expressing interesting ideas. I even agree with the main thrust of the book’s argument, which is that Western Civilization rose to world dominance through a chain of events beginning with the freedom of thought unleashed in the demo......more

Goodreads review by David on April 16, 2014

Prof. Stark has brought together, over a lifetime of study, a very powerful argument which is, in many ways, refreshing to read. The restoration of the West to its proper place within world history is an important enterprise and one that is beginning to be given voice to as the grip the Counter Cult......more

Goodreads review by Adam on March 23, 2015

Short Review: This is really a 4.5 star book. Rodney Stark has made a career of countering the prevailing mood of Academic historians. So he wrote a generally pro-crusades history and a book about the rise of Christianity that not only used historical and sociological tools but also took seriously t......more

Goodreads review by Scriptor Ignotus on August 25, 2016

Despite the author's pretensions to shatter the "politically correct" histories of Western Civilization which he believes to have taken over academia, his own revisionist narrative is a fairly standard Whig history, and it offers little in the way of originality in terms of research and insight. The......more

Goodreads review by Pavlo on November 02, 2014

As some already pointed, this book is "MythBusters" for history. Although the description is correct, it seems to me, that we are rather dealing here with some kind of cycle of "MythBustering". It was obvious to most people that the western civilization is superior to others (in terms of ability to......more

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