Civilization: The West and the Rest [Hardcover]

Prolific Oxford, Harvard and Stanford professor Niall Ferguson continues his excellent string of publications with a well researched and erudite tour of the past 500 years of western civilization. The book is very, very detailed (over 700 end notes, plus a 30 page bibliography), but extremely readable. Its many facts are both interesting and woven together logically and chronologically to support a central thesis - that the West has predominated because it developed six killer apps: competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society, and the work ethic.

Not just another book trumpeting the West's superiority, Ferguson highlights the West's good luck as well as it's superior political and economic structure. He notes the West's willingness to have its killer apps downloaded by other countries, which will mean more wealth for all but also a change in the balance of power.

Like all history books, the content is filtered through the author's particular lens - in this case a right wing, British Empire loving polymath and wit - but Ferguson is thorough in supporting his thesis, confronting other historians' theories and mistakes head-on, and documenting his own views with ample political, economic and cultural references and a fair amount of humour. The prolific references range from esoteric to pop-cultural (e.g. Sid Meier's Civilization V computer game).

There are some minor flaws - the chapter on medicine is mostly about subjects other than medicine; the slave trade to the Americas listed as beginning in 1450, almost half a century before Columbus' voyage to the New World; and Ferguson seems curiously unscientific in his footnote musing that genetics may explain Jews' disproportionate success in arts, science and commerce - but on the whole this is an excellent, densely packed historical tour.

For those familiar with Ferguson's other works, Civilization falls somewhere between his story filled and highly readable Ascent of Money: Financial History of the World and his more academic The Pity Of War Explaining World War I. A broad, detailed canvas with the most interesting of stories laying the foundation for us to speculate about the future of western civilization and the rise of China.

Much better and more thought provoking than other, often economics oriented, books heralding the decline of the West. Civilization the television series will surely cross the Atlantic to North American viewers, just as 'The Ascent of Money' did, but read the book for its rich detail. Buy it, read it, and reflect on the future of both the West and the Rest.

I have always admired Ferguson as one of those few historians who offers his readers a very balanced, big-picture context for understanding the lessons a study of history might teach us. To get to that level of appreciation, Ferguson, in honour of an earlier great historian, suggests that the events of the past have a very instructive way of re-appearing in the present in order to point us to the future. To enforce this point, Ferguson focuses this comparative study on how western civilizations - those large cultural units in time and space - have come to dominate the modern world scene, and how they are now facing a very uncertain future based on a growing competition from new global forces. If the West is seen through the lenses of progress, Ferguson has news for us his readers. All is not rosy. To get where they are today, western nations like Britain, the US, France and Germany have had to use all kinds of competitive concepts to assert their superiority: war, industrialization, capitalism, science, intellectual property, democracy, and exploration. Along the way, the results of modernization have at best been mixed. With a succession of financial crisis, the expansion of global economy, and the growing failure of military technology to secure social and political stability may suggest that the world is about to undergo a major historical shift from west to east. The West's ability to design, order and control its future is very much in doubt, given the fact that other cultures are looking for their place in the sun and may have the means to achieve it: capital, education, population, and technology. What makes Ferguson's thesis so appealing is his ability to back it up with evidence garnered from a wide range of academic sources that lay out in irrefutable fashion the progression of events signalling the geopolitical rise and fall of western values. This book is as much a story of modern history as a primer on how to interpret its many accomplishments and failings. I strongly recommend this very readable book to anyone who is interested in identifying and understanding significant trends transpiring before their very eyes.

Ferguson sets out to explain how and why, Western Civilization became the world`s dominate force. Ferguson also outlines, why other areas of the globe remained an economic backwater. Ferguson boils down the last five hundred years of western success, to a list of six essential components.

Here is the list
1)Competition
2)Science
3)Property
4)Medicine
5)Consumption
6)Work

Each ingredient has its own chapter. Ferguson then takes the reader through various historical lessons. These historic episodes help the reader understand, how these listed factors applied to western success. Some of the history will be very familiar to reader. I am also willing to bet, most readers will also discover a few new areas of history, that Ferguson uncovers.

The conclusion of the book is all about how other countries, have started to apply western methods of success. Will the rise of strong Asian economies eclipse the growth of the west?

This book should really be part one of a series. Part two could be all about how current western societies, have moved away from the six factors of economic prosperity.

One caution I may make to a prospective reader of this book. The over all theme is a somewhat Libertarian message. This will be the deciding factor, in your potential enjoyment of the book.