Civilization: the West and the Rest

E' il titolo del nuovo libro di Niall Ferguson, edito da Allen Lane. William Skidelsky parla con il noto storico sul Guardian. "... it's a book that belongs at the more populist end of the Ferguson oeuvre. In fact, he [Ferguson] says, he wrote it largely with his children in mind. (He has three, two sons and a daughter, ranging from 11 to 17.) 'The book is partly designed so a 17-year-old boy or girl will get a lot of history in a very digestible way, and be able to relate to it,' ... Civilization sets out to answer a question that Ferguson identifies as the 'most interesting' facing historians of the modern era: 'Why, beginning around 1500, did a few small polities on the western end of the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the rest of the world?' In other words, the book attempts to explain the roots of something – western power – that has long fascinated its author." guardian.