The West, the story goes, was built on the ideas and values of Ancient Greece and Rome, which disappeared from Europe during the Dark Ages and were then rediscovered by the Renaissance. But what if that isn’t true?
 
In a bold and magisterial work of immense scope, Josephine Quinn argues that the real story of the West is much bigger than this established paradigm leads us to believe. Moving from the Bronze Age to the Age of Exploration, How the World Made the West reveals a new narrative – one that traces the millennia of global encounters and exchange that built what is now called the West, as societies met, tangled and sometimes grew apart. From the creation of the alphabet by Levantine workers in Egypt, who in a foreign land were prompted to write things down in their own language for the first time, to the arrival of Indian numbers in Europe via the Arab world, Quinn makes the case that understanding societies in isolation is both out-of-date and wrong. It is contact and connections, rather than solitary civilisations, that drive historical change.

‘A work of great confidence, empathy, learning and imagination’ – Rory Stewart
 ‘Eye-popping, mind-blowing, ground-breaking’ – Lucy Worsley
 ‘Bold, beautifully written and filled with insights … Extraordinary’ – Peter Frankopan

Josephine Quinn is a historian and archaeologist, whose work covers Greek, Roman and Phoenician history. She is a Professor of Ancient History in the Classics Faculty and Martin Frederiksen Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at Worcester College, Oxford. She is a contributor to the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books.

Josephine Quinn's books will be available to purchase from our online bookshop soon.

Josephine Quinn: How the World Made the West- a 4,000-year History