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 enlarge | Author: Anthony Pagden
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $13.00
You Save: $22.00 (63%)
New (30) Used (9) from $13.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 86689
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 656
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.9
ISBN: 1400060672
Dewey Decimal Number: 909
EAN: 9781400060672
ASIN: 1400060672
Publication Date: March 25, 2008
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Condition: VERY GOOD CONDITION,BEFORE BUYING PLEASE READ EVERYTHING AND BUY ONLY IF YOU AGREE WITH THE TERMS,;IF THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THE ORDER PLEASE CONTACT ME FIRST AND PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE ME NEGATIVE FEEDBACK AS WE CAN ALWAYS WORK THINGS OUT,THANK YOU.ALL BOOKS ARE SHIPPED USPS MEDIA MAIL,& TAKES 7-10 BUSINESS DAYS NOT COUNTING HOLIDAYS TO DELIVER ACCORDING TO THE USPS,IF EXPEDITED SHIPPING HAS BEEN PAID THEN DELIVERY IS IN 3-6 BUSINESS DAYS SO PLEASE BE PATIENT,I ALWAYS SHIP WITHIN 2 BUSINESS DAYS, BOOK IS IN*EXCELLENT CONDITION*IT IS A BRAND NEW BOOK BUT OUT OF SHRINKWRAP,'BOOK CLUB EDITION',UNREAD,UNOPENED,SHIPS WITH DELIVERY CONFIRMATION,BUY WITH CONFIDENCE,THANKS
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| Customer Reviews:
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The Ballad of East and West April 2, 2008
30 out of 36 found this review helpful
The problems with writing a book about the 2,500-year struggle between East and West are manifold: What is East? What is West? What is the essential struggle? And since it has lasted so long, how do you get it all in one volume? UCLA historian Anthony Pagden has made an audacious effort doing just that. In Pagden's view - echoing Kipling - East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.
According to the author, the struggle between East and West can be characterized as a contest between secular, liberal democracies in the West and religious, despotic societies in the East (the East referred to being primarily the Middle East). Pagden's story begins with the Greeks and the Persians. The Greeks in the 5th century AD were a democracy and the Persians under Darius and Xerxes were a classic oriental despotism. This marked the beginning of the struggle known variously as East vs West, Europe vs Asia, secular vs the sacred, etc. The book ends with America in Iraq basically fighting the same battle that has been fought for the last 2,500 years. In this history there is no progress, there is only eternal struggle.
Most people would disagree with this thesis and rightly so. This Manichean worldview seems a gross oversimplification at first glance. Greece, as well as the West as a whole, was not always liberal and secular; it had a long struggle with despotism itself and Christianity did not always see itself as separate from the state. Likewise, the East was not always illiberal and monolithically religious. Islam, for example, during its golden age in Spain was very tolerant of Christianity and Judaism. There is also much diversity within Islam today.
Even though one may not agree with the author's view of the endless struggle between East and West, this book is very informative and very engaging. It tells more about the myths of East and West that inform the historical actors down through history. The so-called civilizing missions of Alexander in India, Napoleon in Egypt, Mehmed the Great in Constantinople, and Americans in Iraq are instances of one civilization trying to convince another of its superior values.
Therein lies the dilemma of Pagden's project. He does not see moral equivalence, for he comes down squarely on the side of secularism and liberal values, as he should. The West, unfortunately, is not always about those things alone; it is, in the eyes of the East, also about imperialism and military conquest. The East, for its part, does not reject Western values; it rejects the West imposing those values, or rather, it wants its own version of those values. In the end we have something much more complex than a standoff between two sets of universal values. There are grey areas on both sides and their boundaries were always shifting.
That being said, Worlds at War is still very good at explaining how these competing worldviews inevitably and inexorably lead to war.
 Significant and pivotal history, but with a blind spot March 27, 2008
12 out of 41 found this review helpful
Pagden has written a book worthy of our attention and study. In theory, the cleavage he posits between East and West is real enough. In practice, the West has become more like the East and the East more like the classical West (in questioning Judaism and Zionism). Pagden overlooks the fact that the undemocratic and unassailable taboos of the Muslim East are alive and well in Europe, where "blasphemy" is not so much defined outright (that would be too candid), as concealed, under a rubric of fighting "hate" -- the "denial" of the execution gas chambers of Auschwitz, and attacks not on the Holy Koran, but the Holy Talmud. To make matters worse, the horrid pre-Enlightenment, Anglican Divine Right of Kings is resurgent under George W. Bush. Pagden's book is part of a generic trend of placing history in service to the modern American-Zionist agenda. The historical giants of western civilization profiled by Pagden had no use for either Islam or Judaism. Under Europe's current anti-blasphemy (e.g. "hate") laws, those giants of the past would be prosecuted or sitting in jail, as is the case with several dissenting European writers and scientists at present, about whom almost nothing is said by tribunes of western democracy such as Anthony Pagden. Post-modernist democracy in the west is a vehicle mainly for the dogmas of the informal state religion of hedonism, Darwinism, war-Zionism and humanitarian bombing of Serb, Iraqi and Lebanese civilians. I'm all for that West which Pagden very competently evokes in "World's at War," if only I could find it. Rather, I see Muslim populations far more appropriately cynical about government and media, than, for example, my terminally gullible fellow Americans, the supposed heirs of Socrates, Herodotus, Spinoza and Servetus.
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