Civilizația. Vestul și Restul by Niall Ferguson

But things break down dramatically starting in the second half of the book. In the first three chapters (Competition, Science, and Property) this works beautifully as the development of these three apps corresponds to the period in history. Like his other works, and, Ferguson tries to combine two different narrative structures: a topical structure, where each chapter corresponds to one of those six apps, and a chronological structure, where the narrative moves sequentially through history. Ferguson charts the rise of Western Civilization through six different innovations, or 'killer apps,' that were unique to the West's success. This book is a showcase of the best and worst tendencies of Mr. However as good as he is, he has a strong tendency to wander off topic. His writing is crisp, well researched, and illuminating and appeals to both the hardcore history buff as well as to the uninitiated. Niall Ferguson is one of the best popular historians today, certainly one of the most ubiquitous. I had picked up a copy of, but now I don't have the stomach to read it, brief as it looks, since a sin against my reading time is one of the most grievous one can commit against me. I had to apologize to my students for assigning this. The silly jargon -killer apps? please- endless alliterations, little personal observations from strolls through mysterious bazaars and famous art galleries, the whole genius at work, the peppering of patrician snobbery with a soupcon of plebeian hipness, give the whole thing a Friedmanesque feel. But this feels like he's got a huge stock of things he knows and has something to say about, but he doesn't care enough to really stitch together a tight argument. The guy is obviously brilliant, cultured and well-read. The rather long chapter on medicine is a horror of non-sequiturism, with the dozen page discussion of the French Revolution, why Burke was smarter than Marx, utterly orthogonal to anything to do with the claims of the book. Leaving aside the endogeneity problems, he just wanders in and out of focus. He does not sustain attention to his argument, which is that the West came to dominate the Rest because of six 'killer apps' (blech): competition, science, medicine, property rights, consumerism, and work ethic. My problem is that it's just written really badly.

Civilizația. Vestul și Restul by Niall Ferguson