Way of the World : From the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of The Twenty-First Century [Hardcover]

David Fromkin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 1999

How did we get here?

David Fromkin provides arresting and dramatic answers to the questions we ask ourselves as we approach the new millennium. He maps and illuminates the paths by which humanity came to its current state, giving coherence and meaning to the main turning points along the way by relating them to a vision of things to come. His unconventional approach to narrating universal history is to focus on the relevant past and to single out the eight critical evolutions that brought the world from the Big Bang to the eve of the twenty-first century.

He describes how human beings survived by adapting to a world they had not yet begun to make their own, and how they created and developed organized society, religion, and warfare. He emphasizes the transformative forces of art and the written word, and the explosive effects of scientific discoveries. He traces the course of commerce, exploration, the growth of law, and the quest for freedom, and details how their convergence led to the world of today.

History's great movements and moments are here: the rise of the first empires in Mesopotamia; the exodus from Pharaoh's Egypt; the coming of Moses, Confucius, the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad; the fall of the Roman Empire; the rise of China; Vasco da Gama finding the sea road to India that led to unification of the globe under European leadership. Connections are made: the invention of writing, of the alphabet, of the printing press, and of the computer lead to an information revolution that is shaping the world of tomorrow. The industrial, scientific, and technological revolutions are related to the credit revolution that lies behind today's world economy. The eighty-year world war of the twentieth century, which ended only on August 31, 1994, when the last Russian troops left German soil, points the way to a long but perhaps troubled peace in the twenty-first.

Where are we now? The Way of the World asserts that the human race has been borne on the waters of a great river--a river of scientific and technological innovation that has been flowing in the Western world for a thousand years, and that now surges forward more strongly than ever. This river highway, it says, has become the way of the world; and because the constitutional and open society that the United States champions is uniquely suited to it, America will be the lucky country of the centuries to come. Fromkin concludes by examining some of the choices that lie ahead for a world still constrained by its past and by human nature but endowed by science with new powers and possibilities. He pictures exciting prospects ahead--if the United States takes the lead, and can develop wisdom on a scale to match its good fortune.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Historians and philosophers of history have long debated whether the human story is one of constant improvement and progress, or whether history is instead a wheel that leads us again and again to the same place--the same choices, the same errors. To judge by this slender volume, David Fromkin is an unabashed partisan of the first school. In his view, the logic of history leads to "the only civilization still surviving, the scientific one of the modern world," the civilization of capitalism and technology. That view is, of course, arguable, but Fromkin defends it ably and intelligently. General readers will be more interested in Fromkin's overview of world history, a fast-forward tour of the evolution of civilization from a simple congeries of agriculturalists, as in Sumer, to a collectivity of peoples interested in such ideals as morality and peacemaking. Fromkin's whirlwind approach is sometimes vexing--he treats, for instance, the fall of Rome in just a few sentences, ignoring generations of scholarly inquiry on the multiple causes of that decline--but it nonetheless yields a spirited synthesis of past events and patterns. Fromkin closes by remarking that although the future may promise "a nightmare of nationalist, religious, and language-group wars," the worldwide adoption of an American-style federalism that transcends such distinctions is a more attractive possibility. "For all its faults," he writes, "the American way may prove to be the only viable one to deal with the consequences of the modernizing revolution. If so, the world is in luck, for continuing American leadership, like it or not, seems to be what the world has got." --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

As its subtitle indicates, this is a broad, ambitious work. Boston University historian Fromkin (A Peace to End All Peace) guides readers on a whirlwind journey from the dawn of time to the present, touching on subjects as wide-ranging as Jane Goodall's observations of chimpanzees, Pizarro's conquest of Peru and Thomas Edison's ingenious inventions. The main subject is human civilization: what it is; how it came about; why civilizations rose and fell; what the future of civilization itself may be. Beginning with the city-states of ancient Mesopotamia, humanity gradually transformed from a herd of nomadic hunter-gatherers to an ordered society. The ancients invented agriculture, politics and religion?all while struggling with the ever-present barbarians who threatened to destroy them. Central to Fromkin's story is his account of how Western civilization?although by no means the most "advanced" civilization of its day?managed to conquer and eclipse its rivals and dominate the world to such an extent that "modernization" and "Westernization" have come to be synonymous. The final section, on the future of civilization, sometimes sinks into banalities ("For countries, as for people, becoming too wealthy or too powerful tends to be dangerous"). Of course, any work that combines such brevity with such broad scope is bound to be somewhat superficial. Nevertheless, Fromkin is a skillful raconteur with a keen eye for the telling anecdote and a conquistador's power to cover vast swaths of territory in a short amount of time.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 253 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (January 9, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679446095
• ISBN-13: 978-0679446095
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #862,619 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The eight giant steps of man, February 16, 2001

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"michaeleve" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (Paperback)

There are 8 crucial development stages in the history of mankind identified by Fromkin in this book. Before you can take a giant step though, you have to learn how to crawl. This is especially true if your subject is as large as universal history - the story of the world since the inception of civilization. It's appropriate then that the book begins with the origins of man.'Becoming Human' is the first of the eight steps, quickly followed by 'Inventing Civilzation'. Each step is centered on a significant human achievement; here we learn about the discovery of agriculture and the building of the first cities. Step 3 is 'Developing a Conscience' which focuses on the emergence of religions and moral systems simultaneously in separate cultures. Other steps, in order, are: 'Seeking a Lasting Peace' 'Achieving Rationality''Uniting the Planet''Releasing Nature's Energies' and lastly 'Ruling Ourselves'

With such a daunting spread of history, it's quite a challenge for Fromkin to properly explain the main elements of it to readers, to allow us to get a meaning and feel for the whole - especially if you do it in 222 pages. Fortunately the author is equal to it. He obviously had to 'cut and carve' history to fit in here. In answering questions such as - Why have some societies thrived and others disappeared? What from the past is a reliable guide to the future? - Fromkin obviously had to make some choices in the book. He admits that "telling one story necessarily means not telling another". The art of good history then is not only being aware of your biases but having sufficient style to be able to tell the story. Fromkin's style is conciseness, clarity and easy reading. He is able to contain complex ideas or events in short sentences - "the war resumed in 1939-1945 and Germany lost again" and he can describe the work of great men and women of culture in a few words. Writing about Galileo, Bacon and Descartes, he says they were "men of skepticism in thought and moderation in action".

Two recurring themes in the book are that change is the only constant throughout history and that the importance of culture (specifically religion and arts), can not be overstated.

In the last few chapters Fromkin engages in what is becoming a favorite habit of historians - crystal ball gazing, looking to the future and speculating. It's a very tricky thing to do because history is only history when it's in the past. Anyway Fromkin sounds plausible when he says that the problems of the future will be in the areas of population and the environment. Overall he is rather optimistic about our prospects, - for the US specifically and for humanity in general. The 'Way of the World' is short, concise, easy to read and a useful survey of humanity.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fromkin, the cautious optimist., March 12, 2001

By 

Maximus Atheist "maximus atheist" (Louisiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (Paperback)

This book is not only a brief history of humanity described in 8 grand stages but also a "how-to" book for western civilization's success in the 21st century. Very profound and insightful is the author in his interpretations of the past and in his vision of the future's possibilities. For me, this book has a permanent place in my library - a gem of a book for history buffs.

A minor suggestion is that the last two paragraphs in the book should be shifted to the front as the preface. Also, I might suggest to future readers to read the short summaries of each of the first 8 grand steps of humanity's progress located in chapter 10 or 11 before reading the main chapters themselves.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The March of Progress?, July 26, 2004

By 

Omer Belsky (Haifa, Israel) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (Paperback)

David Fromkin goes out in search of a useable past. Nor would he, I think, shy away from that description. He starts 'The Way of the World' with a description of a shaman "clad in bear skin" and a tale in front of the fire, telling the tribes people where they have come from and where they are heading. Fromkin's avowed purpose is to do the same for a Modern audience (p.3)

Fromkin was nominated for a Pulitzer for 'A Peace to End All Peace', the story of bravery and folly at the birth of the modern Middle East. In it, he demonstrated considerable writing skills, original thought, and enormous amount of research.

Only the first of these qualities is also apparent in 'The Way of the World'. The prose is even better this time around - but unfortunately, the other elements that made 'A Peace to End All Peace' into a near classic are missing.

'The Way of All World' seems to be based on fairly well known secondary sources. That's not necessary a bad thing, but you can feel that Fromkin is not as conversant about, say, Vasco da Gama's voyages, as he was about British Middle East policies in the 1920s.

Lack of originality in research can also be made up for in original thinking, but although Fromkin's analysis is insightful and clever it is hardly unique.

The first two parts of the book are a short history of mankind, the first chapter is about the biological evolution of homo sapiens (a well written account, drawing on such popular science books as Richard Dawkins's River Out of Eden), and the second one about pre history. Then we get two chapters on ancient civilizations, before Fromkin decides to narrow his scope and look at Western History, from the Roman Empire to the modern day.

Fromkin's is a not a very original account; although it is a break with some traditional views of European history (the Reformation is mentioned in all of four pages), it is consistent with the themes of recent books about the rise of the West, such as David Landes's 'The Wealth and Poverty of Nations'. Like Landes, Fromkin sees a triumph of the West ("the history of the modern world can be seen as the tale of how, out of the many civilizations that flourished in the year 1000, all but one succumbed in the course of the next thousand years" p. 87) caused by a 'scientific. technological and industrial revolution' (ibid). Unlike Landes, Fromkin all but ignores the importance of politics and capitalism (mentioned only 3 times in the index) to rise of European Civilization.

The third part of the book, in which Fromkin attempts to draw conclusions about the Future leaves much to be desired. Unlike Alexis do Tocqueville, whom Fromkin lionizes, Fromkin is too cautious to make predictions. He says that, at least in the beginning of the twenty first century, America will still be the most powerful country, but that is near obvious. Other predictions are equally self evident, even handed, and safe "... a central question in the politics of the twenty first century throughout the world will be the tension between holding together and pulling apart: between the centripetal pull of a modern global economy that requires regional and planetary organization, and the centrifugal push of atavistic tribalism" (p. 188).

Some six years on, it is clear that this book was published during the Clinton years. Much in the last few chapters is a hymn to American values, in particular democracy, environmentalism, secularism and multilateralism. For a liberal such as me, the importance of these values is self evident (although it should not go unquestioned). But is George W Bush's America really the best champion of these values?

Fromkin's seems oblivious to the undercurrents of American life that goes in directions opposite to the ones he champions. He discusses Woodrow Wilson's League of Nation as an embodiment of American values in International Relations. But his book is missing one crucial name: Henry Cabot Lodge, who stopped the US from entering the league of nation.

As a world leader, the United States does embody values of freedom, secularism and multilateralism. But it also has values which are unilateral, imperialistic, protectionist and isolationist. A safe prediction is that the world will be shaped significantly by the US decision of which of these sets of values, or which combination thereof, it will pursue in the 21st century.