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Why the West has Won

Victor Davis Hanson author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Faber & Faber

Published:4th Nov '02

Should be back in stock very soon

Why the West has Won cover

Why the West has Won by Victor Davis Hanson is a clear-sighted and brilliant exploration of the reasons that the Western World has found itself in the morally precarious position of exporting its values across the globe.

This is a brilliant history of the rise to dominance of the West, exploring the links between cultural values and military success.

This is a brilliant history of the rise to dominance of the West, exploring the links between cultural values and military success. Instead of weighing up the West through its cultural and literary accomplishments, Hanson engages with the much starker record of the Western battlefield. In place of The Great Books, he studies The Great Battles, and offers graphic representations of nine representative clashes between West and non-West. Hanson writes uncommonly well about battle, and has an uncanny ability to evoke the chaos and terror of warfare, so crystallising his argument into records of a few hours of intense combat.

Hanson argues that the West has won not just because of technology and military might, but because of its focus on individualism, democratic political structures, and scientific rationalism. However this is no mere Eurocentric account of the steady millennia-long rise of Western power. Rather, it is an explanation of why the West finds itself now militarily unmatched, its values spreading around the globe - sometimes with devastating effects on local cultures which have at times adopted the worst of what European traditions have offered or imposed.

'Western countries have tended to defeat their enemies in warfare over the last 2500 years as a result of a sustained cultural heritage that has made them ruthlessly efficient on the battlefield. That is the thesis of this robust and stimulating history, and it is especially relevant after the terrible events of September 11.' Richard Lambert, Financial Times; 'At the heart of this big, combative and gutsy book, there is an argument which is powerful and convincing. Wars are not technical exercises in a vacuum; they are products of human societies, and some of the key values and strengths of those societies will be expressed in their conduct of war.' Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph

ISBN: 9780571216406

Dimensions: 215mm x 135mm x 42mm

Weight: 570g

512 pages

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