The Collapse of Western Civilization

The Collapse of Western Civilization
Author: Naomi Oreskes
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2014-07-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0231537956

The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought and—finally—the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093, when the disintegration of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet led to mass migration and a complete reshuffling of the global order. Writing from the Second People's Republic of China on the 300th anniversary of the Great Collapse, a senior scholar presents a gripping and deeply disturbing account of how the children of the Enlightenment—the political and economic elites of the so-called advanced industrial societies—failed to act, and so brought about the collapse of Western civilization. In this haunting, provocative work of science-based fiction, Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway imagine a world devastated by climate change. Dramatizing the science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, the book reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do and reveals the self-serving interests of the so called "carbon combustion complex" that have turned the practice of science into political fodder. Based on sound scholarship and yet unafraid to speak boldly, this book provides a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate change literature.

Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization
Author: Samuel Gregg
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2019-06-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1621579069

"Gregg's book is the closet thing I've encountered in a long time to a one-volume user's manual for operating Western Civilization." —The Stream "Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization offers a concise intellectual history of the West through the prism of the relationship between faith and reason." —Free Beacon The genius of Western civilization is its unique synthesis of reason and faith. But today that synthesis is under attack—from the East by radical Islam (faith without reason) and from within the West itself by aggressive secularism (reason without faith). The stakes are incalculably high. The naïve and increasingly common assumption that reason and faith are incompatible is simply at odds with the facts of history. The revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures of a reasonable Creator imbued Judaism and Christianity with a conviction that the world is intelligible, leading to the flowering of reason and the invention of science in the West. It was no accident that the Enlightenment took place in the culture formed by the Jewish and Christian faiths. We can all see that faith without reason is benighted at best, fanatical and violent at worst. But too many forget that reason, stripped of faith, is subject to its own pathologies. A supposedly autonomous reason easily sinks into fanaticism, stifling dissent as bigoted and irrational and devouring the humane civilization fostered by the integration of reason and faith. The blood-soaked history of the twentieth century attests to the totalitarian forces unleashed by corrupted reason. But Samuel Gregg does more than lament the intellectual and spiritual ruin caused by the divorce of reason and faith. He shows that each of these foundational principles corrects the other’s excesses and enhances our comprehension of the truth in a continuous renewal of civilization. By recovering this balance, we can avoid a suicidal winner-take-all conflict between reason and faith and a future that will respect neither.

Civilization

Civilization
Author: Niall Ferguson
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1101548029

From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.

Music in Western Civilization

Music in Western Civilization
Author: Paul Henry Lang
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 1158
Release: 1997
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780393040746

A comprehensive history of occidental music focuses on the function of music as an expression of the spirit and artistic life of each age.

Enduring Western Civilization

Enduring Western Civilization
Author: Silvia Federici
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1995-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN:

What do we mean by Western Civilization? When did the expression originate and why? At a time when there is a widespread perception that Western Civilization is undergoing a historic crisis, and when postmodernism, feminist theory, afrocentrism, deconstruction, and other current philosophical schools define themselves as alternatives to, or critiques of, Western Civilization, this book seeks to trace the development of the concept of Western Civilization and to examine the reasons for its endurance. It also suggests ways in which proponents of Western Civilization can co-opt ideas from opponents. Written from a multidisciplinary viewpoint, the essays in this volume trace the development of the concept of Western Civilization and seek to explode many standing beliefs—primarily those which concern the very existence of a Western tradition. Bound to be controversial, the book will be of interest to scholars and activists in the fields of cultural history, anthropology, and the history of ideas, as well as general readers interested in the enduring discussion of the notion of Western Civilization.

The Uniqueness of Western Civilization

The Uniqueness of Western Civilization
Author: Ricardo Duchesne
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 540
Release: 2011-02-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004192484

After challenging the multicultural effort to “provincialize” the history of Western civilization, this book argues that the roots of the West’s exceptional creativity should be traced back to the uniquely aristocratic warlike culture of Indo-European speakers.

Western Civilization: Beyond Boundaries

Western Civilization: Beyond Boundaries
Author: Thomas F. X. Noble
Publisher: Cengage Learning
Total Pages: 976
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781133602712

Europe's place in the world throughout the narrative and in the primary source feature, The Global Record. The seventh edition has been carefully revised and edited for greater accessibility, and features a streamlined design that incorporates pedagogical features such as focus questions, key terms, and section summaries to better support students of western civilization. The reconceived narrative and restructured organization, featuring smaller, more cohesive learning units, lend to greater ease of use for both students and instructors. History CourseMate, a set of media-rich study tools with interactive eBook that gives students access to quizzes, flashcards, primary sources, videos and more, are available for this new edition. (CourseMate may be bundled with the text or purchased separately.) Available in the following split options: WESTERN CIVILIZATION: BEYOND BOUNDARIES, Seventh Edition Complete, Volume I: To 1715, Volume II: Since 1560, Volume A: To 1500, Volume B: 1300-1815, and Volume C: Since 1789. Available with InfoTrac Student Collections http://gocengage.com/infotrac. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

How to Destroy Western Civilization and Other Topics

How to Destroy Western Civilization and Other Topics
Author: Peter Kreeft, Ph.D.
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2021-03-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1621642682

Peter Kreeft presents a series of brilliant essays about many of the problems that undermine our Western civilization, along with ways to address them. "These essays are not new proposals or solutions to today's problems," he says. "They are old. They have been tried, and have worked. They have made people happy and good. That is what makes them so radical and so unusual today." In his witty, readable style, Kreeft implores us to gather wisdom and preserve it, as the monks did in the Middle Ages. He offers relevant philosophical precepts, divided into various categories, that can be collected and remembered in order to guide us and future generations in the days ahead. Kreeft emphasizes that the most necessary thing to save our civilization is to have children. If we don't have children, our civilization will cease to exist. The "unmentionable elephant in the room", he tells us, is sex, properly understood. Religious liberty is being attacked in the name of "sexual liberty", in other words, abortion. Kreeft encourages us to fight back—with joy and confidence—with the one weapon that will win the future: children.

Zombies in Western Culture

Zombies in Western Culture
Author: John Vervaeke
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2017-06-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 178374331X

Why has the zombie become such a pervasive figure in twenty-first-century popular culture? John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro and Filip Miscevic seek to answer this question by arguing that particular aspects of the zombie, common to a variety of media forms, reflect a crisis in modern Western culture. The authors examine the essential features of the zombie, including mindlessness, ugliness and homelessness, and argue that these reflect the outlook of the contemporary West and its attendant zeitgeists of anxiety, alienation, disconnection and disenfranchisement. They trace the relationship between zombies and the theme of secular apocalypse, demonstrating that the zombie draws its power from being a perversion of the Christian mythos of death and resurrection. Symbolic of a lost Christian worldview, the zombie represents a world that can no longer explain itself, nor provide us with instructions for how to live within it. The concept of 'domicide' or the destruction of home is developed to describe the modern crisis of meaning that the zombie both represents and reflects. This is illustrated using case studies including the relocation of the Anishinaabe of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, and the upheaval of population displacement in the Hellenistic period. Finally, the authors invoke and reformulate symbols of the four horseman of the apocalypse as rhetorical analogues to frame those aspects of contemporary collapse that elucidate the horror of the zombie. Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis is required reading for anyone interested in the phenomenon of zombies in contemporary culture. It will also be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience including students and scholars of culture studies, semiotics, philosophy, religious studies, eschatology, anthropology, Jungian studies, and sociology.

University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, Volume 7

University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, Volume 7
Author: Keith M. Baker
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 480
Release: 1987-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780226069500

The University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization (nine volumes) makes available to students and teachers a unique selection of primary documents, many in new translations. These readings, prepared for the highly praised Western civilization sequence at the University of Chicago, were chosen by an outstanding group of scholars whose experience teaching that course spans almost four decades. Each volume includes rarely anthologized selections as well as standard, more familiar texts; a bibliography of recommended parallel readings; and introductions providing background for the selections. Beginning with Periclean Athens and concluding with twentieth-century Europe, these source materials enable teachers and students to explore a variety of critical approaches to important events and themes in Western history. Individual volumes provide essential background reading for courses covering specific eras and periods. The complete nine-volume series is ideal for general courses in history and Western civilization sequences.