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Worlds at War
The 2,500 - Year Struggle Between East and West
Anthony Pagden
576 pages
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21 black and white plates
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234x156mm
978-0-19-956977-9
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Paperback
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16 July 2009
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- The first ever continuous history of the conflicts between East and West - from the struggle between Greeks and Persians, through the centuries-long confrontation between Islam and Christianity, right through to the wars of the twenty-first century
- Shows how the antagonism between East and West predates the birth of Islam and Christianity
- Highlights the links between a series of conflicts over 2500 years that have previously only ever been treated in isolation from each other
- Reminds us how the struggle between East and West has shaped the West's vision of itself - and how fundamentally it has shaped the modern world
The differences that divide West from East go deeper than politics, deeper than religion, argues Anthony Pagden. To understand this volatile relationship, and how it has played out over the centuries, we need to go back before the Crusades, before the birth of Islam, before the birth of Christianity, to the fifth century BCE.
Europe was born out of Asia and for centuries the two shared a single history. But when the Persian emperor Xerxes tried to conquer Greece, a struggle began which has never ceased. This book tells the story of that long conflict.
First Alexander the Great and then the Romans tried to unite Europe and Asia into a single civilization. With the conversion of the West to Christianity and
much of the East to Islam, a bitter war broke out between two universal religions, each claiming world dominance. By the seventeenth century, with the decline of the Church, the contest had shifted from religion to philosophy: the West's scientific rationality in contrast to those sought ultimate guidance it in the words of God.
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed the disintegration of the great Muslim empires - the Ottoman, the Mughal, and the Safavid in Iran - and the increasing Western domination of the whole of Asia. The resultant attempt to mix Islam and Western modernism sparked off a struggle in the Islamic world between reformers and traditionalists which persists to this day.
The wars between East and West have not only
been the longest and most costly in human history, they have also formed the West's vision of itself as independent, free, secular, and now democratic. They have shaped, and continue to shape, the nature of the modern world.Readership: Anyone interested in the history of conflict between East and West, from classical antiquity, through the struggles between Islam and Christianity in the Crusades and the Enlightenment, to the problems of the twenty-first century
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Anthony Pagden, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles
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Review(s) from previous edition
"consistently engaging. - Scotland on Sunday.
"His bold, panoramic and highly readable book is often a page-turner...Worlds at War is hard to put down." - Amy Chua The Scotsman
"Pagden's narrative is engagingly written and always interesting." - Literary review, John Gray
"If you are going to read only one book on the Manichean struggle between East and West, this is the book" - Efraim Karsh, Professor of Mediterranean Studies at the University of London and author of Islamic Imperialism: A History
"A masterpiece of stunning scope, readability, and relevance. Pagden is as fine a storyteller as he is a scholar. Worlds at War makes epic battles of the past come alive, not just as turning points of history but as illuminations of what is happening today in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.
" - Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution and former US Deputy Secretary of State
"fine vignettes...witty, provocative, conversation from a `age.
" - The Economist
"Learned, fluent and thorough... One of the pleasures of Pagden's splendid book is that it is perfectly possible to enjoy and learn from it while disagreeing with its thesis
" - Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph,
"There is much to admire in Pagden's book. His breadth of knowledge across two and a half millenia of Western (and to a great extent Eastern) history is impressive... As an intellectual history of Western views of the East, the book is exemplary." - Ian Garrick Mason. Spectator.
"'Worlds at War' offers some fine vignettes...witty, provocative conversation from a sage." - Economist
"Learned, fluent and thoroughly entertaining account." - Dominic Sandbrook. Telegraph Review.
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Preface
1: Perpetual Enmity
2: In the Shadow of Alexander
3: A World of Citizens
4: The Church Triumphant
5: The Coming of Islam
6: Houses of War
7: The Present Terror of the World
8: Science Ascendant
9: Enlightened Orientalism
10: The Mohammed of the West
11: The Eastward Course of Empire
12: Epilogue: Towards the Future
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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