How the World Made the West

'A work of great confidence, empathy, learning and imagination' RORY STEWART'Eye-popping, mind-blowing, ground-breaking' LUCY WORSLEYThe West, history tells us, was built on the ideas and values of Ancient Greece and Rome, which disappeared from Europe during the Dark Ages and were then rediscovered by the Renaissance. But what if that isn't true? What if the story is very different? In this bold and magisterial work of immense scope, Josephine Quinn reveals a new narrative: one that traces the relationships that built what is now called the West from the Bronze Age to the Age of Exploration, as societies met, tangled and sometimes grew apart. She makes the case that it is contact and connections, rather than distinct and isolated civilisations, that drive historical change. It is not peoples that make history – people do.

Erudite, inventive, playful – a work of great confidence, empathy, learning and imagination, An eye-popping, mind-blowing, ground-breaking juggernaut of an argument, from a writer ready to roar. This is the book the ancient world needs now, No one but Josephine Quinn could have written a book like this - a book of tremendous erudition and curiosity; a book that teaches you something new on almost every page. With a sense of growing political urgency, How the World Made the West reveals the folly of civilisational thinking. In its place, Quinn traces the many entangled paths of art, commerce, religion, and language, forging a deeper and truer understanding of our common world, This book – full of memorable stories – is nothing less than a reorientation of the history of “the West.” Josephine Quinn persuasively shows that the mingling of cultures through trade and migration is as old as civilisation itself, breaking down the hackneyed idea of the uniqueness of the Greco-Roman world . . . This is a book to unite us in divided times, Josephine Quinn is one of the few scholars writing today who could possibly present such a masterful sweeping overview as an accessible and compelling story . . . A marvelous, majestic book. This will be an instant classic

Josephine Quinn is Professor of Ancient History at Oxford University, and Martin Frederiksen Fellow and Tutor of Ancient History at Worcester College, Oxford. She has degrees from Oxford and UC Berkeley, has taught in America, Italy and the UK, and co-directed the Tunisian-British archaeological excavations at Utica. She is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, as well as to radio and television programmes. She lives in Oxford.