Customer Reviews

Why the West Rules - For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

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In this extraordinary book you will find the answer to the title question "Why the West Rules." It is written in a clear and light, yet rigorous, fashion, and Morris lays down his case without shying away from controversy. The validity of his measuring tool (the social development index) is convincingly stated, and wonderfully argued, as he displays all the empirical evidence through chapter after chapter of entertaining narrative. The second part of the title question ("For Now") leads to another equally clear answer... which I will not disclose in this note. This very ambitious book, with its broadest of scopes and a flair for the anecdotal detail, is a very enjoyable read, one I do not hesitate to fully recommend.

Very rarely I dont finish a book but this one I could not. It is packed with information but just too much detail. I would have preferred the conclusion not the explanation. If you are anthropologist I guess it is a must. I am not.

The Economist [UK] gave this a favorable (not a rave) review. The blurb tells me that "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." Perhaps.

I found that Morris writes more like a journalist than a political scientist or historian. And he is far too flip about events and his own originality. "Why the West Rules -- For Now" contains a lengthy bibliography. What a surprize not to find Hegel nor Spengler nor Toynbee! Nor, in fact, a reference to Nelson's "Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change."

This might not be serious, but Morris purports to be studying the "Patterns of History" -- without noting the others who have expounded both cyclicity and patterning before him. There is no mention of Vico (who said in the 17th century that civilization develops in a recurring cycle of three ages), nor of Herder, nor (indeed) of Isaiah Berlin.

This is a 600+-page ego-trip for Morris.

Not recommended.