How the World Made the West

Praise

“As our leaders and pundits glorify ‘Western Civilization’ and excoriate migration and wokeness, Josephine Quinn offers a momentous correction: the Greeks and Romans were hodgepodge people, and if we are their heirs it is only because of globe-spanning connections that always produce multifarious ways of life. . . . Brilliant and essential.”—Samuel Moyn, author of Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times

“Bold, beautifully written, and filled with insights, How the World Made the West demands that we challenge traditional views of the past. An extraordinary achievement.”—Peter Frankopan, bestselling author of The Earth Transformed

“One of the most fascinating works of global history to appear for many years . . . incredibly ambitious and wide-ranging . . . allowing us to understand just how globalized and interconnected mankind has always been.”—William Dalrymple, bestselling author of The Anarchy

“Engaging, aspirational, and inspirational, How the World Made the West will be devoured by history buffs and should be required reading for those arguing for the supremacy of ‘Western Civilization’ as well as those arguing for its demise and dismantling, and everyone in between.”—Eric Cline, author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed

“How the World Made the West is a work of dizzying sweep. Josephine Quinn takes readers on a mesmerizing and frame-shifting journey from the Early Bronze Age to the First Contact. In the process, she deals a magnificently mighty blow to the wrong-headed conceits of civilizational thinking, with all its distortions and misprisions. Weaving effortlessly between literary sources and archaeological evidence, and with an ever-vigilant eye for the fine grain of evocative detail, this book is Big History as it should be written.”—Dan-el Padilla Peralta, author of Divine Institutions

“Superb, refreshing, and full of delights, this is world history at its best.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The World: A Family History of Humanity

“No one but Josephine Quinn could have written a book like this—a book of enormous erudition and curiosity, a book that teaches you something new on almost every page.”—Merve Emre, author of The Personality Brokers

“The book traces the stories of an imposing array of different early cultures, always focusing on their relations with others and how each of them drew on their predecessors and contemporaries. Quinn makes a point of reexamining many of the familiar landmarks of ancient history. . . . Even readers with a fairly good knowledge of history are likely to learn something new. . . . A fascinating look at world history from the broadest possible perspective.”—Kirkus Review, starred review