William Hardy McNeill Bücher

Die Brücke in Wischegrad über die grünen Fluten der Drina verbindet nicht nur das West- mit dem Ostufer an der Grenze zwischen Bosnien und Serbien, sondern genau genommen sogar Orient und Okzident. Auf ihr und um sie herum lagern sich Geschichten und Legenden, Schicksale und Lebensentwürfe an. Es beginnt mit jenem Plan Mehmet Pascha Sokolis, Großwesir des Osmanischen Reiches, eine Brücke zwischen dem Abendland und dem Orient, zwischen Christen und Muslimen zu schlagen über die Drina, dort, wo er einst geboren wurde, bevor er seine schwindelerregende Karriere am Hofe des Sultans machte. Kinder angeln und spielen an der Brücke, Bettler und Arme sind dort, die jungen Leute haben hier ihre ersten Rendezvous, Händler überqueren sie und verkaufen ihre Waren. Man verabredet sich bei ihr und trifft sich auf ihr durch die Jahrhunderte hindurch: "Unzählige von uns haben dort gesessen, den Kopf in die Hände gestützt, angelehnt an den behauenen glatten Stein und unter dem ewigen Spiel des Lichtes auf den Bergen und den Wolken am Himmel die gleichen, aber immer neu verwickelten Fäden unserer Wischegrader Geschicke entwirrt ..."

The Rise of the West, winner of the National Book Award for history in 1964, is famous for its ambitious scope and intellectual rigor. In it, McNeill challenges the Spengler-Toynbee view that a number of separate civilizations pursued essentially independent careers, and argues instead that human cultures interacted at every stage of their history. The author suggests that from the Neolithic beginnings of grain agriculture to the present major social changes in all parts of the world were triggered by new or newly important foreign stimuli, and he presents a persuasive narrative of world history to support this claim. In a retrospective essay titled "The Rise of the West after Twenty-five Years," McNeill shows how his book was shaped by the time and place in which it was written (1954-63). He discusses how historiography subsequently developed and suggests how his portrait of the world's past in The Rise of the West should be revised to reflect these changes. "This is not only the most learned and the most intelligent, it is also the most stimulating and fascinating book that has ever set out to recount and explain the whole history of mankind. . . . To read it is a great experience. It leaves echoes to reverberate, and seeds to germinate in the mind."—H. R. Trevor-Roper, New York Times Book Review

Shows the interrelatedness of technical, military, political, and economic history and examines the changes introduced by the industrialization of war

Upon its original publication, Plagues and Peoples was an immediate critical and popular success, offering a radically new interpretation of world history as seen through the extraordinary impact--political, demographic, ecological, and psychological--of disease on cultures. From the conquest of Mexico by smallpox as much as by the Spanish, to the bubonic plague in China, to the typhoid epidemic in Europe, the history of disease is the history of humankind. With the identification of AIDS in the early 1980s, another chapter has been added to this chronicle of events, which William McNeill explores in his new introduction to this updated editon.Thought-provoking, well-researched, and compulsively readable, Plagues and Peoples is that rare book that is as fascinating as it is scholarly, as intriguing as it is enlightening. "A brilliantly conceptualized and challenging achievement" (Kirkus Reviews), it is essential reading, offering a new perspective on human history.

Renowned historian William H. McNeil provides a brilliant narrative chronology of the development of Western civilization, representing its socio-political as well as cultural aspects. This sixth edition includes new material for the twentieth-century period and completely revised bibliographies. An invaluable tool for the study of Western civilization, the Handbook is an essential complement to readings in primary and secondary sources such as those in the nine-volume University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization.