Why the West Rules for Now

Ian Morris, 2010

A sweeping explanation of how geography, energy, institutions and historical reversals made Western dominance possible, and why it may not last.

16 parts, about 41 minutes to read.

Why read it

Explains why world leadership has swung between East and West over millennia, and why the Western lead was never inevitable
Gives you a way to compare societies across history by what they can do: capture energy, build cities, fight, share information
Rejects racial and cultural explanations, arguing that shared human nature meets different geography at different moments

Jared DiamondProfessor of geography at UCLA and Pulitzer Prize winning author
Here you have three books wrapped into one: an exciting novel that happens to be true; an entertaining but thorough historical account of everything important that happened to any important people in the last ten millennia; and an educated guess about what will happen in the future.
Niall FergusonAuthor of The Ascent of Money
The nearest thing to a unified field theory of history we are ever likely to get.

Ian MorrisWillard Professor of Classics at Stanford University, historian and archaeologist
- Born 27 January 1960 in Stoke on Trent, England
- BA Birmingham 1981, PhD Cambridge 1985
- Taught at the University of Chicago 1987 to 1995, at Stanford since 1995
- Directed Stanford's excavation at Monte Polizzo, Sicily, 2000 to 2007
- Chair of Classics, director of the Archaeology Center, senior associate dean at Stanford
- Research fellowships from the Guggenheim and Carnegie foundations and the National Geographic Society

Goes deeperThe Great Divergence
Morris explains how steam power broke the ceiling on development; Pomeranz adds that China’s coal mines lay mainly in the northwest and needed ventilation, while mine pumping helped drive British steam technology.