How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity Author: Visit Amazon's Rodney Stark Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1610170857 | Format: EPUB
How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity Description
Review
“Stark has a vigorous prose style and a gift for clear explanation. The pace is swift, and the narrative thrilling.” —New York Times
“Fun to read, full of anecdote and incident . . . Mr. Stark is especially adept at challenging received ideas.” —Wall Street Journal
“Stark proves himself once again as a historical myth-buster.” —CBN.com
“Rodney Stark turns what we ‘know’ about history on its head.” —Relevant Magazine
“Stimulating and provocative . . . Deftly researched.” —Publishers Weekly
“Fresh, blunt, and highly persuasive.” —Newsweek
“[Stark’s] works are an encouraging corrective to the anti-Western history routinely taught in our schools.” —New Oxford Review
“Gripping, with tales of courage and desperation, outsized characters, and fate of cultures hanging in the balance . . . Masterful . . . Sets the record straight.” —National Catholic Register
“Compelling reading, adding depth and coherence to the often nebulous hyperbole of historical hypotheses. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal
About the Author
Rodney Stark is the award-winning author of 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. Before earning his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, Stark was a staff writer for several major publications. Visit the author online at www.rodneystark.com.
- Hardcover: 432 pages
- Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute; 1 edition (March 17, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1610170857
- ISBN-13: 978-1610170857
- Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Anyone who has taken a history course at a university lately can attest to the rigid, doctrinaire multiculturalism taught. Textbook after textbook downplays the achievements of the west. "How the West Won" is a brisk slap in the face to the current animus against western civilization.
Take the Dark Ages, which are always portrayed as an age of utter barbarism in our textbooks, a time when society declined and all that was worthy in the ancient world vanished. Stark points out that "serious historians have known for decades that these claims are a complete fraud. Even the respectable encyclopedias...now define the Dark Ages as a myth" (p 71).
He pulls out fact after fact to prove his position. Close to Stockholm, "an elaborate industrial community known as Helgo flourished from about 250 through 700." (p 82), and archaeologists have found a "'bronze Buddha figure made in India'" (p 81) in the ruins of Helgo, revealing how wide the trade was at the time.
Not only did trade flourish, but "Within several centuries of the fall of Rome, Europeans have developed military technology that far surpassed not the the Romans' but that of every other society on earth" (p 84).
Military might was important in the era. Islam was on the rise. In 1095 "The Byzantine emperor Alexius...appealed for Western forces to defend Constantinople from the threat of Turkish invaders" (p 102). Already, the entire of North Africa, which had once been solidly Christian, had fallen to Muslim armies.
Stark asks us to "Compare Shakespeare's tragedies with those of the ancient Greeks" (p 119) For example, Oedipus is at the mercy of a blind, unfeeling fate. The ancient gods were without virtue; they were petty, vengeful, and vain.
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