The Concept of The West as Political History

 

The author makes several important points in this survey of western civilization. Using fourteen individual lives from different time periods, she shows that the people living at the time did not always have a concept of The West as a unified civilization. This is particularly true of the Greeks who considered themselves as much Asiatic as European.

The second point the author makes is that history is often written to embrace a political narrative. This orientation gives more coherence to history to illustrate a position than is factually correct. Thus the concept of The West is used to present a history that focuses on the ideas and ideals embraced by the culture at that time usually to prove their origin theory and illustrate why the people believe in a particular paradigm.

I thought the author did a good job of illustrating her thesis with the lives of a variety of individuals. It made the book much more readable that a straight argument from historical facts. Certainly, if you read in depth history of past civilizations, it’s clear that their conception of who they were at a particular time period is not necessarily the same as the way they are portrayed in modern history books.

I recommend this book as an antidote to the prevalent notion of history as an unbroken sweep from Greece and Rome through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment to the present day.

I received this book from Penguin Random House for this review.