Civilization
  • Published: 18 June 2018
  • ISBN: 9780141987934
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $24.99
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Civilization

The Six Killer Apps of Western Power

Formats & editions
Paperback
18 Jun 2018
EBook
28 Feb 2011
Audiobook
1 Jul 2011
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How the West's six 'killer apps' transformed the history of the world

Winner of the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize 2013

If in the year 1411 you had been able to circumnavigate the globe and compare the dazzling civilizations of the Orient with Europe and North America, the idea that the West would dominate the Rest for most of the next half millennium would have struck you as wildly fanciful. So how did it happen?

The answer, Ferguson argues, was the West's development of six 'killer applications': competition, science, property, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. But has the West now lost its monopoly on these six things? If so, are we living through the end of Western ascendancy?
  • Published: 18 June 2018
  • ISBN: 9780141987934
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is a Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. The bestselling author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire and Colossus, he also writes regularly for newspapers and magazines all over the world. Since 2003 he has written and presented three highly successful television documentary series for Channel Four: Empire, American Colossus and, most recently, The War of the World. He, his wife and three children divide their time between the United Kingdom and the United States.

Also by Niall Ferguson

Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe
The Square and the Tower
The Ascent of Money
Kissinger
The Cash Nexus
The Great Degeneration
Civilization
See all

Praise for Civilization

Ferguson is the most brilliant British historian of his generation ... he writes with splendid panache

The Times

One of the world's leading historians

Hamish McRae, Independent

Civilization is another masterpiece ... a pulsing energy suffuses his account [and] fascinating facts burst like fireworks on every page

Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times

This is sharp. It feels urgent. Ferguson, with a properly financially literate mind, twists his knife with great literary brio

Andrew Marr, Financial Times

A dazzling history of Western ideas

Economist