Quote Originally Posted by Fisherking View Post
The book is not your typical History. It is a multi disciplinary study of human social development. It looks for patterns of history, rather than the traditional names, dates, and places and dose not go in-depth into what we all know or can find elsewhere.

It is a first attempt at using history as a prediction tool.

As social development is the focus it dose tend to cut short personalities focusing on the ups and downs of development in the eastern and western core areas.
Hmm, well I read some of it. But this is my main problem with the book. He pushes everything into the pattern he wants. I find his description of the forces of history to be absurd. On the whole the book seems very shoddy

Frankly I find the review to be little more than sniping missing the point completely, however, if you have not read the book that would be most difficult to tell.

I wish I had more time to do justice to both the review and response but my time at the moment is short.

There are plenty of positive review of this work. Buying this particular review is a mistake, to me.

Read it and write your own.
Duchesne does have a huge chip on his shoulder. But I just finished his book "The Uniqueness of Western Civilization". In the first part of it he gives a detailed critique of many of the books Morris relies on. They are quite bad. I found his analysis of the different techniques this group of historians (which seems to include Morris) uses to twist things the way they want to be very revealing. The rest of his (D's) book is pretty good to.

By the way, did you see this bit from the Duchesne review?

In a lecture he gave at the Carnegie Council, October 28, 2010, Morris said the following regarding the arrival of Europeans in the Americas: ‘There are other factors as well involved of course, but the Europeans are the ones who settle in the Americas, take it over, and kill the enormous majority of the native population with their disgusting European germs’
That about sums up Morris.

Another telling bit quoted in that review is the part where after he is forced to acknowledge that Newton's book was great he hurries to mention the Salem witch trials and how Newton got into numerology. He is very agenda driven.

Anyway. Not to trash your taste or anything...