Recommended by Dunsborough Book Chat Club
Josephine Quinn is a professor of ancient history at Oxford University and has taught in America, Italy, and the UK. The depth and breadth of her knowledge is astounding and at times confounding.
How the World Made the West covers 4000 years of Asian, European, and African history, and later, the newly discovered Americas. In 1570, Sir Thomas North translated Kalili wa-dimma into English and a later editor in 1888 said it was the ‘English version of an Italian adaptation of a Spanish translation of a Latin version of a Hebrew translation of an Arabic adaptation of the Pehlevi version of the Indian original.’ This is how one feels reading this book. Overwhelmed! Following the fortunes of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes together with the Hun, the Goths, the Visigoths, the Vikings, the Ottomans, Napoleon Bonaparte, Hannibal, China, Iceland, the Holy Roman Empire, Rome, Constantinople, the Popes, the Franks. The Lombards, the Britons, Charlemagne ad infinitum is extremely complex and retaining names and dates, and the connections between the plethora of peoples is a challenge not to be undertaken lightly. This is a book for scholars of history.
The writing is not turgid, but it does need a great deal of concentration not to become lost in the maze of 4000 years of facts. Lesser mortals may find it hard going.
3.5/5 Stars