Civilization  (English, Paperback, Ferguson Niall)

Civilization: The West and The Rest, is an excellently created work of genius, by Niall Ferguson, it is his latest books to hit the stores. It is a book that takes the reader for a journey of the world through time, a journey which starts from around the 1500’s to the modern day world. It’s a book that describes predominantly, the history of a civilization, how it started, the shapes and forms it took, the reasons behind its changing shapes, the ideologies behind it, music, literature, philo...

Being an Indian, reading Niall Ferguson felt like looking into the mind of a person from another planet. It takes for granted that European (West) Power is all pervasive and all powerful; as long as the largest number of people int he world come from China and India, the numerical advantage itself should be enough to disprove Mr. Ferguson's assumption. Having said that, what irked me most was the realisation that its verging on evil to consider history as a one up man-ship forum for west, eas...

As almost any other book by Niall Ferguson, this book too serves to perpetuate divisions of society. His book "The Ascent of Money" was thinly veiled attempt to perpetuate class divisions, this one openly attempts to extol Western exploitative practices and propagate ethnocentric prejudice.

Ferguson puts forth 6 factors that led to rise of western "civilization", viz.: competition, science, property rights, consumerism, medicine and work ethic. Even those with a faint knowledge of history an...