Josephine Quinn's How the World Made the West: A 4,000 Year History is a wonderful thought exercise into the origins of Western culture and how societies evolved over a 4,000 year period. Much of our thinking has centered around how "West" and "East" were distinctly different cultures that occasionally interacted through trade. Quinn's book challenges that narrative in a powerful way.
The West (Europe) borrowed extensively from innovations from the Middle East, the Far East, and India. Irrigation, legal codes, sailing, scholarship, and metalworking all had origins outside of Greco-Roman and Western European society. Quinn's argument is that globalism has helped advance both West and East at varying rates over the millenia, with trade, warfare, and human travel helping to shape and share ideas and force technological advances along the way.
How the World Made the West is a brisk walk through several millennia of world history, and Quinn astutely points out the contributions of globalism to advancing civilization.
MY RATING: 4.5
