Cultures of the West - A History, Volume 1: To 1750

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List of contents

• Contents


• Maps


• Preface


• About the Author


• Note on Dates


• Prologue: Before History


• 1. Water and Soil, Stone and Metal:


• The First Civilizations


• 10,000-1200 bce


• Ancient Mesopotamia and the Emergence of Civilization


• Mesopotamian Life: Farms and Cities, Writing and Numbers


• Mesopotamian Religion: Heaven, the Great Above, the Great Below


• From Sumer to Old Babylon


• Ancient Egypt, Gift of the Nile


• Old Kingdom Egypt


• Egyptian Religion: The Kingdom of the Dead


• Middle Kingdom Egypt


• The New Kingdom Empire


• The Indo-European Irruption


• The Age of Iron Begins


• 2. The Monotheists: Jews and Persians


• 1200-550 bce


• The Bible and History


• The Promised Land


• Dreams of a Golden Age


• Women and the Law


• Prophets and Prophecy


• The Struggle for Jewish Identity


• Persia and the Religion of Fire


• 3. The Ancient Greeks: From Arrival to Glory


• 2000-479 bce


• The First Greeks


• The Search for Mythic Ancestors in Archaic Age Greece


• Colonists, Hoplites, and the Path to Citizenship


• A Cult of Masculinity


• Civilized Pursuits: Lyric Poetry


• Sparta: A Militarized Citizenry


• Miletus: The Birthplace of Philosophy


• Athens: Home to Democracy


• The Persian Wars


• 4. The Classical and Hellenistic Ages


• 479-30 bce


• Athens's Golden Age


• The Polis: Ritual and Restraint


• The Excluded: Women, Children, and the Enslaved


• The Invention of Drama


• The Peloponnesian Disaster


• Advances in Historical Inquiry


• Medicine as Natural Law


• The Flowering of Greek Philosophy


• The Rise of Macedonia and the Conquests of Alexander the Great


• The Hellenistic World


• The Maccabean Revolt


• Second Temple Judaism


• 5. Romans and Republicans


• 753-27 bce


• Ancient Italy and the Rise of Rome


• From Monarchy to Republic


• The Republic of Virtue


• Size Matters


• Can the Republic Be Saved?


• 6. Rome's Empire


• 27 bce-305 ce


• Rome's Golden Age: The Augustan Era


• The Sea, the Sea


• Roman Lives and Values


• Height of the Pax Romana: The "Five Good Emperors"


• Life and Economy


• The Time of Troubles


• 7. The Rise of Christianity in a Roman World


• 40 bce-300 ce


• The Vitality of Roman Religion


• The Jesus Mystery


• A Crisis in Tradition


• Ministry and Movement


• What Happened to His Disciples?


• Christianities Everywhere


• Romans in Pursuit


• Philosophical Foundations: Stoicism and Neoplatonism


• 8. The Early Middle Ages


• 300-750


• Imperial Decline: Rome's Overreach


• A Christian Emperor and a Christian Church


• The Rise of "New Rome": The Byzantine Empire


• Barbarian Kings and Warlords


• Divided Estates and Kingdoms


• Germanic Law


• Christian Paganism


• Christian Monasticism


• 9. The Expansive Realm of Islam


• To 900 ce


• "Age of Ignorance": The Arabian Background


• The Qur'an and History


• From Preacher to Conqueror


• Conversion or Compulsion?


• The Islamic Empire


• Sunnis and Shi'a


• Islam and the Classical Traditions


• Women and Islam


• 10. Reform and Renewal in the Greater West


• 750-1258


• Two Palace Coups and the Carolingian Ascent


• Charlemagne and Imperial Coronation


• Carolingian Collapse


• The Splintering of the Caliphate


• The Reinvention of Western Europe


• Mediterranean Cities


• The Reinvention of the Church


• The Reinvention of the Islamic World


• The Call for Crusades


• The Crusades


• Turkish Power and Byzantine Decline


• Judaism Reformed, Renewed, and Reviled


• The Emergence of the Slavs


• 11. Worlds Brought Down


• 1258-1453


• Late Medieval Europe


• Scholasticism and Mysticism


• The Guild System


• The Mendicant Orders


• Early Representative Government


• The Weakening of the Papacy


• Noble Privilege and Popular Rebellion


• The Hundred Years' War


• The Plague


• The Mongol Takeover


• A New Center for Islam


• The Ottoman Turks


• 12. Renaissances and Reformations


• 1350-1563


• Rebirth or Culmination?


• The Political and Economic Matrix


• The Renaissance Achievement


• Christian Humanism


• Erasmus: Humanist Scholar and Social Critic


• Martin Luther: The Gift of Salvation


• Luther's Rebellion against the Church


• The Reformation Goes International


• Calvin and "The Elect"


• Strife and Settlement in England


• Catholic Reform and the Council of Trent


• The Society of Jesus


• What About the Catholic and Orthodox East?


• 13. Worlds Old and New


• 1450-1700


• European Voyages of Discovery


• New Continents and Profits


• Conquest and Epidemics


• The Copernican Drama


• Galileo and the Truth of Numbers


• Inquisition and Inquiry


• The Revolution Broadens


• The Ethical Costs of Science


• The Islamic Retreat from Science


• Thinking About Truth


• Newton's Mathematical Principles


• 14. The Wars of All against All


• 1540-1648


• The Godly Society


• From the Peace of Augsburg to the Edict of Nantes: The French Wars of Religion


• Dutch Ascendancy and Spanish Eclipse


• The Thirty Years' War


• Enemies Within: The Hunt for Witches


• The Jews of the East and West


• The Waning of the Sultanate


• New Centers of Intellectual and Cultural Life


• Wars of Religion: The Eastern Front


• Economic Change in an Atlantic World


• 15. From Westphalia to Paris: Regimes Old and New


• 1648-1750


• The Peace of Westphalia: 1648


• The Argument for Tyranny


• The Social Contract


• Absolute Politics


• Police States


• Self-Indulgence with a Purpose: The Example of Versailles


• Paying for Absolutism


• Mercantilism and Poverty


• International Trade in a Mercantilist Age


• The Slave Trade and Domestic Subjugation


• Domesticating Dynamism: Regulating Culture


• The Control of Private Life


• England's Separate Path: The Rise of Constitutional Monarchy


• Ottoman and Persian Absolutism


• The Return of Uncertainty


• Reference Maps


• Appendix: Table of Contents for Sources for Cultures of the West


• Glossary


• Credits


• Index

About the author

Clifford R. Backman is Associate Professor of History at Boston University, where he has been a member of the department since 1989. He is currently at work on a book that traces the development of toleration and interpersonal forgiveness in medieval Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Summary

Cultures of the West: A History, Fourth Edition, focuses on the ways in which the major ideas and passions of Western culture developed, internally, and how they interacted with the broader world--for good and for ill. The development of such key ideas as religion, science, and philosophy form the central narrative of this book.

Cultures of the West stands apart from other textbooks in a variety of ways, the first being thematic unity. What did people think and believe, throughout our history, about human nature, the right way to live, God, the best forms of government, or the meaning of human life? Rather than maintaining a single interpretive stance, author Clifford R. Backman relies upon a consistent set of questions: What did people think and feel throughout the centuries about politics, science, religion, and sex? How did they come to their positions regarding the right way to live? Backman's many years of experience in the classroom have informed his approach--students respond to engaging questions more than they are inspired by facts.

Additional text

An original book with an authorial tone of voice that comes through. Clifford Backman is willing to be honest and direct, and to propose interpretations worth considering."

Product details

• Authors: Clifford Backman
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 20.10.2023
• EAN: 9780197668429
• ISBN: 978-0-19-766842-9
• No. of pages: 736
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; EDUCATION / General, History, HISTORY / World, HISTORY / Europe / Western, Humanities