How the West Won

The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

De: Rodney Stark

Narrado por: Kevin Foley

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.

©2014 Rodney Stark (P)2014 Tantor

Enlightening.

Enjoyed the balance administered to the secular narrative and its received orthodoxy. Let the debate between the competeing worldviews continue... I think Christ is best served and His program benefits... And His detractors appear guilty of the bigotry they so often try to incriminate others for.

best book ever.

Stark is one of the best at challenging the accepted status quo. He takes no prisoners in his history writing.

pulling back the curtain on hidden history.

Finally! A book that explains the "why" of Western superiority, power, freedom and modernity. Outstanding!

A needed assault on modern perceptions of history

Many have preconceived notions of how history unfolded and the West was (and is) a big, bad bully forcing our thoughts and beliefs on the smaller and poorer regions of the world. Rodney Stark turns this thinking on its head and would force even the staunchest of historical revisionists to question their beliefs about history.

very interesting. packed with info.

Great book. Need to listen to it twice as there is a lot of information to absorb.

Rodney Stark does it again. Amazing!

An incredible primer on the rise and success of Western civilization! I highly recommend this book.

How does Jessy Jackson get to decide who learns ?

It is sad when people decide what other people need to know , stealing potential knowledge of others out of jealousy,
It's too bad Western Civilization studies has been removed from universities, didn't Hitler and other monsters burn books so he could write his own version of history... this is a good book!

Excellent!

The narration was very good, making the advance over the centuries to modern times exciting and captivating. This one of my favorite audio books.

We all have a bias

I really appreciate Rodney Stark’s desire to fight back against biased history. This is my third book by Stark. God’s Battalions told the story of Crusades and the Triumph of Christianity used sociology and history to explore how Christianity grew.

In How The West Won, Stark is fighting against a pendulum that has swung too far and now can be anti-western. Earlier, pride in Western achievements was easy to see, but also easy to see was how that Western bias lead to racism and blind spots about the negatives of some of the West’s bad points.

Stark, fairly briefly attempts to re-balance the academy’s view of Western triumph. The components of how the West Won are fairly simple. Christianity had a rational worldview and a God that created and ordered the world. That orderly world gave rise to science and innovation. Christianity valued education in order to better understand the world. In addition, Capitalism and European political disunity (which kept countries vying for power and innovating in technology), while maintaining Latin for communication across Europe further developed Western strengths. (This is, of course, over simplifying Stark, his argument is rich in detail and very readable.)

Contrary to some pro-western historians, Stark repeatedly argues that Empire, especially Roman, was bad for innovation (and therefore a drain on the rise of the west) because it relied on military power for strength instead of empowering the general populace through economic and political means.

Stark also compared different parts of Europe. The political liberty of England, the geographic exploration of Vikings, the creative capitalism in Italy and later in England, are all helpful areas of comparison. Stark has no problem highlighting negatives, Spain’s colonialism was more about wealth for the monarchy and building the strength of their Spanish army than building the country’s economy or helping empower the citizens of Spain. So Spain did not fall so much as it lost the income that propped up the monarchy and overspent its resources.

More than just a positive argument for the west, Stark also makes a negative arguments against China, Islam and the Native Americans of the Western Hemisphere. China is often cited as having first discovered a number of innovations. But China often discouraged the use of those innovations, while in general the West developed the innovations. (It is impossible to know in many cases, but Stark suggests that in many cases innovators independently came up with similar solutions in different places without influence.)

Most of my complaint comes from the comparisons of Western and Eastern cultures. Necessarily because of the briefness of the book, Stark has to make generalizations and he is countering other broad generalizations. But Stark goes too far in much the same way that he charges that others go too far. For instance, he mentions Muslims that believe that natural disasters are caused by God’s judgement as reason that real science failed to develop under Islam, but fails to mentions that many Christians believed the same thing (then and now).

He gives context to slavery, genocide and human rights and shows that in context it is likely that human rights were more valued in the West and slavery ended earlier than in the Middle East or Eastern Asia, but tends to dismiss legitimate criticism of the West at the same time.

I really do recommend this both as well written and researched history and corrective to some of the over-correction in social science and the academy. But just because I think this is a helpful corrective, does not mean that I do not see that at times Stark is going too far himself.

It changed my thinking about Western history

This book was a revelation to me.
Almost everything I've been taught about western progression was wrong.