How the World Made the West

Perfect for readers of Tom Holland's Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, Mary Beard's SPQR and Peter Frankopan, it will appeal to lovers of history and the ancient world who are frustrated with the same story being told the same way over and over again; those who suspect that there is something missing from all the books that focus on the triumph of the West over the Rest, but aren't sure what

Josephine Quinn is Professor of Ancient History at Oxford University, and Martin Frederiksen Fellow and Tutor of Ancient History at Worcester College, Oxford. She has degrees from Oxford and UC Berkeley, has taught in America, Italy and the UK, and co-directed the Tunisian-British archaeological excavations at Utica. She is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, as well as to radio and television programmes. She lives in Oxford.

Erudite, inventive, playful - a work of great confidence, empathy, learning and imagination
An eye-popping, mind-blowing, ground-breaking juggernaut of an argument, from a writer ready to roar. This is the book the ancient world needs now
No one but Josephine Quinn could have written a book like this - a book of enormous erudition and curiosity; a book that teaches you something new on almost every page. With a sense of growing political urgency, How the World Made the West reveals the folly of civilisational thinking. In its place, Quinn traces the many entangled paths of art, commerce, religion, and language, forging a deeper and truer understanding of our common world
A masterpiece that gives us a new lens to understand 4,000 years of history
This book - full of memorable stories - is nothing less than a reorientation of the history of "the West." Josephine Quinn persuasively shows that the mingling of cultures through trade and migration is as old as civilisation itself, breaking down the hackneyed idea of the uniqueness of the Greco-Roman world . . . This is a book to unite us in divided times
Josephine Quinn is one of the few scholars writing today who could possibly present such a masterful sweeping overview as an accessible and compelling story . . . A marvelous, majestic book. This will be an instant classic
Jo Quinn gives us a fascinating insight into the entanglements that have driven change in our collective past: the journeys, meetings, relationships and exchanges that, more than anything else, have helped shape our world today. It is a brilliant reminder that our human story is - and always will be - empty if we don't acknowledge the ways in which we have constantly interacted with, and depended on, one another