Niall Ferguson's "Civilization: The West and the Rest" on NPR Books

11.03.2011

A sail down the Thames in 1411 would have felt dismal by comparison. London was busy but disease-ridden, shabby and just plain filthy. In a new book and television series, historian Niall Ferguson asks how the backward West would come to dominate not just China but the rest of the world for 500 years or more, and he identifies six institutions. He calls them killer apps and argues that China is now catching up fast because it downloaded those lessons while Westerners lose faith. > View article