West
About This Book
Naoíse Mac Sweeney, a prize-winning historian and an emerging voice in big history, takes a wide view across thousands of years to examine the idea of the West. She presents it as a single cultural inheritance running from ancient Greece to the present day, and argues that this notion is largely a product of our collective imagination. Her book challenges the myths and origin stories that underpin the history many of us were taught. Rather than following a conventional chronology, the account is built around fourteen people who each helped shape the Western idea. They include Herodotus, a mixed-race migrant, and Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved African American who became a literary sensation. The cast also includes Gladstone, who had a private passion for epic poetry, and Al-Kindi, a medieval Arab scholar. Some of these figures are familiar, while others are unsung, and the author views them all with fresh eyes. The subjects span millennia and continents and come from many religions, nationalities and traditions, with widely differing levels of wealth and education. Each life, she shows, reveals something unexpected about its own age and adds a piece to the puzzle of how the modern idea of the West emerged and why it has so often been misunderstood. The concept of the West shapes daily life in ways we rarely notice, from entertainment and politics to global markets and the telling of world history. The book is written for anyone who wants to see the world around them differently. At a time when societies are rethinking what the West means and where it is going, the author argues that understanding its past is essential.
ISBN: 9780593472170
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