Why the West Rules - for Now
The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future
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Why the West Rules - for Now
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Narrated by:
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Antony Ferguson
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By:
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Ian Morris
About this listen
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 20th century secured its global supremacy.
Now, at the beginning of the 21st 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 200 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 50,000 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.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
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By: Andrew Marr
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The Mental Floss History of the World
- An Irreverent Romp Through Civilization's Best Bits
- By: Steve Wiegand, Erik Sass
- Narrated by: Johny Heller
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 569
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 373
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Story4 out of 5 stars 371
About 60,000 years ago, the first Homo sapiens were just beginning their move across the grasslands and up the ladder of civilization. Everything since then, as they say, is history. Just in case you were sleeping in class that day, the geniuses at mental_floss magazine have put together a hilarious (and historically accurate) primer on everything you need to know---and that means the good stuff.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant and Funny. What more could you want?
- By Septimus MacGhilleglas on 01-22-09
By: Steve Wiegand, and others
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1491
- New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,740
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,217
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,203
Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus' landing had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago; existed mainly in small nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas were, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last 30 years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Exposes Non-Academic Audience to The Debate Between Ideas of Pre-Colombian America's
- By Christopher on 01-19-17
By: Charles C. Mann
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The Fate of Rome
- Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
- By: Kyle Harper
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 397
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 331
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 329
Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes listeners from Rome's pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Interesting and worthwhile
- By B. Coleman on 06-15-19
By: Kyle Harper
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What Is America
- A Short History of the New World Order
- By: Ronald Wright
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
Ranging with dazzling expertise through anthropology, history, and literature, Wright reconfigures our self-perception, arguing that the "essence" of America can be traced to the foundations of our history--literally to the collision of worlds that began in 1492, as one civilization subsumed another--and exploring how these currents continue to shape our world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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insightful overview
- By rm3154 on 04-19-12
By: Ronald Wright
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1493
- Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,119
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,769
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,768
More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating Mindbending History.
- By Betsy Powel on 12-19-11
By: Charles C. Mann
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Don't Know Much About Geography: Revised and Updated Edition
- Everything You Need to Know About the World But Never Learned, Revised and Updated
- By: Kenneth C. Davis
- Narrated by: Kenneth C. Davis, Joe Ochman, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4 out of 5 stars 67
Kenneth C. Davis, author of Don't Know Much About® History, Don't Know Much About the Civil War and Don't Know Much About the Bible, turns his inimitable wit and wide-ranging knowledge to the subject of geography, and proves once and for all that there is a lot more to it than labeling countries on a map. From often amusing perceptions people have had through the ages about the world and the universe to the changing map of today, Davis shows how geography is really a great crossroad of many fields: biology, meteorology, astronomy, history, economics, and even politics.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Errors
- By The Product Owner on 08-29-15
By: Kenneth C. Davis
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Justinian's Flea
- Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe
- By: William Rosen
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 438
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 236
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Story4 out of 5 stars 236
The emperor Justinian reunified Rome's fractured empire by defeating the Goths and Vandals. At his capital in Constantinople, he built the world's most beautiful building, married the most powerful empress, and wrote the empire's most enduring legal code, seemingly restoring Rome's fortunes for the next five hundred years. Then, in the summer of 542, he encountered a flea. The ensuing outbreak of bubonic plague killed 5,000 people a day in Constantinople and nearly killed Justinian himself.
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5 out of 5 stars
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More history than Disease
- By joan on 06-25-07
By: William Rosen
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Millennium
- From Religion to Revolution: How Civilization Has Changed over a Thousand Years
- By: Ian Mortimer
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 78
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 79
In Millennium, best-selling historian Ian Mortimer takes the listener on a whirlwind tour of the last 10 centuries of Western history. It is a journey into a past vividly brought to life and bursting with ideas, that pits one century against another in his quest to measure which century saw the greatest change. We journey from a time when there was a fair chance of your village being burned to the ground by invaders - and dried human dung was a recommended cure for cancer - to a world in which explorers sailed into the unknown and civilizations came into conflict.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Bad ending - literally
- By John Gordon on 12-14-16
By: Ian Mortimer
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Destiny Disrupted
- A History of the World through Islamic Eyes
- By: Tamim Ansary
- Narrated by: Tamim Ansary
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,965
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,651
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,643
Until about 1800, the West and the Islamic realm were like two adjacent, parallel universes, each assuming itself to be the center of the world while ignoring the other. As Europeans colonized the globe, the two world histories intersected and the Western narrative drove the other one under. The West hardly noticed, but the Islamic world found the encounter profoundly disrupting.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A history of the world before the West mattered
- By David on 05-05-14
By: Tamim Ansary
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The Ocean of Churn
- By: Sanjeev Sanyal
- Narrated by: Abhishek Sharma
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
In this ambitious audiobook, best-selling author Sanjeev Sanyal chronicles the grand sweep of history from East Africa to Australia, conjuring the great cities of Angkor and Vijayanagar, medieval Arab empires, and Chinese "treasure fleets" in rich, vivid detail. He explores remote archaeological sites, maritime trading networks, and half-forgotten oral tales to challenge established historical narratives with fresh evidence. Shining new light on medieval geopolitics and long-lost cities, The Ocean of Churn is a mesmerizing journey into the heart of a vibrant civilization.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An unputdownable treatise on the history of Indian Ocean
- By Akash Mitra on 06-20-20
By: Sanjeev Sanyal
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Nonzero
- The Logic of Human Destiny
- By: Robert Wright
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 414
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 308
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Story4 out of 5 stars 308
At the beginning of Nonzero, Robert Wright sets out to "define the arrow of the history of life, from the primordial soup to the World Wide Web." Twenty-two chapters later, after a sweeping and vivid narrative of the human past, he has succeeded and has mounted a powerful challenge to the conventional view that evolution and human history are aimless.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Non-Zero (but pretty close to zero)
- By Douglas on 02-06-14
By: Robert Wright
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Walls
- A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick
- By: David Frye
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 119
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story5 out of 5 stars 102
With Frye as our raconteur-guide, we journey back to a time before barriers of brick and stone even existed - to an era in which nomadic tribes vied for scarce resources, and each man was bred to a life of struggle. Ultimately, those same men would create edifices of mud, brick, and stone and with them effectively divide humanity: On one side were those the walls protected; on the other, those the walls kept out. The stars of this narrative are the walls themselves - rising up in places as ancient and exotic as Mesopotamia, Babylon, Greece, China, Rome, Mongolia, Afghanistan, the lower Mississippi, and even Central America....
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5 out of 5 stars
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A boom that will transform how you view all of history.
- By BB on 08-04-24
By: David Frye
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Civilization
- The West and the Rest
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrated by: Niall Ferguson
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,328
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,986
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,968
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Thoughtful analysis of the ascendancy of the West.
- By Patrick on 05-25-13
By: Niall Ferguson
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Ancient China
- A Captivating Guide to the Ancient History of China and the Chinese Civilization Starting from the Shang Dynasty to the Fall of the Han Dynasty
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Desmond Manny
- Length: 3 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 59
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4 out of 5 stars 54
In this audiobook, you will be led on a journey through almost 2,000 years of Chinese history, showing you all the ups and downs of those ancient times, the sufferings and joys of the Chinese people, along with their greatest achievements and failures. Dynasties will change, people will be killed and born, art made and destroyed, but the Chinese civilization will prevail, rising from humble beginnings to an empire that at some points outshined any other in the world at that time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Ancient China
- By Joey on 05-31-20
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American Holocaust
- The Conquest of the New World
- By: David E. Stannard
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 199
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 169
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Story5 out of 5 stars 169
For 400 years - from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the US Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s - the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America endured an unending firestorm of violence. During that time the native population of the Western Hemisphere declined by as many as 100 million people.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Most important book I never heard of
- By Robert Bourque on 03-16-18
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An Edible History of Humanity
- By: Tom Standage
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 568
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 465
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Story4 out of 5 stars 465
Throughout history, food has acted as a catalyst of social change, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict, and economic expansion. An Edible History of Humanity is a pithy, entertaining account of how a series of changes---caused, enabled, or influenced by food---has helped to shape and transform societies around the world.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Flawed, but worthwhile
- By Ary Shalizi on 12-28-17
By: Tom Standage
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- Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots
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4 out of 5 stars
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