Download or read book The Rise of the West written by William H. McNeill and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-07-30 with total page 866 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rise of the West, winner of the National Book Award for history in 1964, is famous for its ambitious scope and intellectual rigor. In it, McNeill challenges the Spengler-Toynbee view that a number of separate civilizations pursued essentially independent careers, and argues instead that human cultures interacted at every stage of their history. The author suggests that from the Neolithic beginnings of grain agriculture to the present major social changes in all parts of the world were triggered by new or newly important foreign stimuli, and he presents a persuasive narrative of world history to support this claim. In a retrospective essay titled "The Rise of the West after Twenty-five Years," McNeill shows how his book was shaped by the time and place in which it was written (1954-63). He discusses how historiography subsequently developed and suggests how his portrait of the world's past in The Rise of the West should be revised to reflect these changes. "This is not only the most learned and the most intelligent, it is also the most stimulating and fascinating book that has ever set out to recount and explain the whole history of mankind. . . . To read it is a great experience. It leaves echoes to reverberate, and seeds to germinate in the mind."—H. R. Trevor-Roper, New York Times Book Review

Download or read book Under Western Skies written by Donald Worster and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ns explore our environmental history, uncover the role of nature and the land in the western past, and examine the West as the world's first multicultural society.

Download or read book Civilization written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.

Download or read book Why the West Rules For Now written by Ian Morris and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2011-01-14 with total page 767 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does the West rule? In this magnum opus, eminent Stanford polymath Ian Morris answers this provocative question, drawing on 50,000 years of history, archeology, and the methods of social science, to make sense of when, how, and why the paths of development differed in the East and West — and what this portends for the 21st century. There are two broad schools of thought on why the West rules. Proponents of "Long-Term Lock-In" theories such as Jared Diamond suggest that from time immemorial, some critical factor — geography, climate, or culture perhaps — made East and West unalterably different, and determined that the industrial revolution would happen in the West and push it further ahead of the East. But the East led the West between 500 and 1600, so this development can't have been inevitable; and so proponents of "Short-Term Accident" theories argue that Western rule was a temporary aberration that is now coming to an end, with Japan, China, and India resuming their rightful places on the world stage. However, as the West led for 9,000 of the previous 10,000 years, it wasn't just a temporary aberration. So, if we want to know why the West rules, we need a whole new theory. Ian Morris, boldly entering the turf of Jared Diamond and Niall Ferguson, provides the broader approach that is necessary, combining the textual historian's focus on context, the anthropological archaeologist's awareness of the deep past, and the social scientist's comparative methods to make sense of the past, present, and future — in a way no one has ever done before.

Download or read book The American West written by Anne M. Butler and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2007-08-06 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing events from the pre-history to the present day, this book offers a concise and accessible history of the American West. Explores the complex interactions between and among cultures in the American West Chronologically organized and informed by the latest scholarship Grounded in attention to race, class, gender, and the environment, the text focuses on social, economic, and political forces that shaped the lived experiences of diverse westerners and influenced the patterns of western history.

Download or read book History of the Westerners written by J. E. Reynolds and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Expectations of Equality written by Albert S. Broussard and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this concise and engaging new volume, the latest in our growing Western History Series, Professor Broussard examines how African Americans over the course of nearly five centuries attempted to find their place in the states and territories west of the ninety-eighth meridian. Although black westerners, like white immigrants or native-born whites, defy easy characterization because they came to the West for a variety of reasons, blacks have shared certain commonalities with these groups. The majority of African Americans who settled in the West saw the region as a place where they could fashion a better life for themselves or their families. Some naively viewed the West as an oasis, a place free of racial or class restrictions. While many white immigrants, native-born whites, Hispanics, and Asians also saw the West as a place of opportunity, the experiences of African Americans differed profoundly from whites, people who never faced such a pervasive pattern of discrimination based solely on their race. In addition to covering central themes and important figures, Expectations of Equality tells the stories of every-day African American men and women, persons who lived in the West from the early 1500s until the turn of the twenty-first century. Many of them led ordinary lives that are difficult to reconstruct in detail–working, raising families, attending church, and educating their children. Yet some of them forged colorful careers as scouts and mountain men, Buffalo Soldiers, businesswomen, athletes, activists, and politicians, their stories helping to make Expectations of Equality the perfect choice as supplementary reading—not only for courses in the history of the U.S. West, but also for survey courses in United States and African American history.

Download or read book The Westerners written by Dee Brown and published by Michael Joseph. This book was released on 1974 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The American West written by Stephen Aron and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Familiar figures - missionaries, explorers, trappers, traders, prospectors, gunfighters, cowboys, and Indians - appear in these pages. So do renowned individuals such as Daniel Boone, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and John Wayne. But their stories contribute to a history of the American West that is longer, larger, and more complicated than we were once told.

Download or read book Mana A History of a Western Category written by Nicolas Meylan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-07-10 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mana: A History of a Western Category Nicolas Meylan proposes a critical account of Western imaginations of mana, an Oceanic word borrowed by Europeans to denote ‘supernatural power’.

Download or read book The Decline of the West written by Oswald Spengler and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1991 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spengler's work describes how we have entered into a centuries-long "world-historical" phase comparable to late antiquity, and his controversial ideas spark debate over the meaning of historiography.

Download or read book The Great Encounter of China and the West 1500 1800 written by David E. Mungello and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the twenty-first century, China has emerged as the leading challenger to U.S. global dominance. China is often seen as a sleeping giant, emerging out of poverty, backwardness, and totalitarianism and moving toward modernization. However, history shows that this vast country is not newly awakening, but rather returning to its previous state of world eminence. With this compelling perspective in mind, D. E. Mungello convincingly shows that contemporary relations between China and the West are far more like the 1500-1800 period than the more recent past. This fully revised second edition retains the clear and concise qualities of its predecessor, while developing important new social and cultural themes such as gender, sexuality, music, and technology. Drawing from the author's thirty years of experience teaching world history, this book illustrates the importance of history to students and general readers trying to understand today's world.

Download or read book The Westerners written by White Stewart Edward and published by Hardpress Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-23 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Download or read book The Metropolitan Frontier written by Carl Abbott and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 1995-09-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honolulu to Houston and from Fargo to Fairbanks to show how Western cities organize the region's vast spaces and connect them to the even larger sphere of the world economy. His survey moves from economic change to social and political response, examining the initial boom of the 1940s, the process of change in the following decades, and the ultimate impact of Western cities on their environments, on the Western regional character, and on national identity. Today, a.

Download or read book Western Historical Thinking written by Jörn Rüsen and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents 17 contributions written by an international group of historians addressing the intercultural dimension of historical theory. The editor's introduction discusses historical thinking as intercultural discourse and presents ten hypotheses that aim to define Western historical thinking. Scholars from Asia and Africa comment on his position in light of their own ideas about the sense and meaning of historical thinking. The volume wraps up with comments on the questions and issues raised by the authors and suggestions for the future of intercultural communication. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book The Significance of the Frontier in American History written by Frederick Jackson Turner and published by . This book was released on 2014-02-13 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2014 Reprint of 1894 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. The "Frontier Thesis" or "Turner Thesis," is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1894 that American democracy was formed by the American Frontier. He stressed the process-the moving frontier line-and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. He also stressed consequences of a ostensibly limitless frontier and that American democracy and egalitarianism were the principle results. In Turner's thesis the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats or nobles, nor for landed gentry who controlled most of the land and charged heavy rents. Frontier land was free for the taking. Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. He won very wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines.

Download or read book The Atomic West written by Bruce W. Hevly and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Manhattan Project—the World War II race to produce an atomic bomb—transformed the entire country in myriad ways, but it did not affect each region equally. Acting on an enduring perception of the American West as an “empty” place, the U.S. government located a disproportionate number of nuclear facilities—particularly the ones most likely to spread pollution—in western states. The Manhattan Project manufactured plutonium at Hanford, Washington; designed and assembled bombs at Los Alamos, New Mexico; and detonated the world’s first atomic bomb at Alamagordo, New Mexico, on June 16, 1945. In the years that followed the war, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission selected additional western sites for its work. Many westerners initially welcomed the atom. Like federal officials, they, too, regarded their region as “empty,” or underdeveloped. Facilities to make, test, and base atomic weapons, sites to store nuclear waste, and even nuclear power plants were regarded as assets. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, regional attitudes began to change. At a variety of locales, ranging from Eskimo Alaska to Mormon Utah, westerners devoted themselves to resisting the atom and its effects on their environments and communities. Just as the atomic age had dawned in the American West, so its artificial sun began to set there. The Atomic West brings together contributions from several disciplines to explore the impact on the West of the development of atomic power from wartime secrecy and initial postwar enthusiasm to public doubts and protest in the 1970s and 1980s. An impressive example of the benefits of interdisciplinary studies on complex topics, The Atomic West advances our understanding of both regional history and the history of science, and does so with human communities as a significant focal point. The book will be of special interest to students and experts on the American West, environmental history, and the history of science and technology.