Summary & Study Guide - Civilization: The West and the Rest

This book is a summary of “Civilization: The West and the Rest,” by Niall Ferguson. 

The central question is: Why did the West dominate the Rest and not vice versa? The book describes six concepts that the West has developed that allow them to leap ahead of the Rest, unleashing the Industrial Revolution and increasing human productivity. Six hundred years ago, Ming China and Ottoman Turkey dominated the world civilizations, while Western Europe was a miserable backwater, devastated by incessant war and disease. But today, Western civilization has risen to global dominance. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals in the past 500 or so years?

In Civilization, Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the 15th century, the West developed six powerful concepts that the Rest lacked: competition, science, property rights, medicine, consumerism, and work ethic. These six killer apps allowed the West to leap ahead of the Rest, unleashing the Industrial Revolution and increasing human productivity.

Yet now, the days of Western predominance are numbered because the Rest are adopting these same concepts, while the West has lost faith in its own civilization.

Read this book and learn how these six killer apps helped the West dominate the world.

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