What do you think?
Rate this book
The Cultures of the West, Volume One: To 1750: A History
The Cultures of the West: A History focuses on the ways in which the major ideas and passions of Western culture developed, internally, and how they interacted with the broader world-for good and for ill. The development of such key ideas as religion, science, and philosophy form the central
narrative of this book.
The Cultures of the West stands apart from other textbooks in a variety of ways, the first being thematic unity. What did people think and believe, throughout our history, about human nature, the right way to live, God, the best forms of government, or the meaning of human life? Rather than
maintaining a single interpretive stance, author Clifford R. Backman relies upon a consistent set of questions: What did people think and feel throughout the centuries about politics, science, religion, and sex? How did they come to their positions regarding the right way to live? Backman's many
years of experience in the classroom have informed his approach-students respond to engaging questions more than they are inspired by facts.
Features:
* Single author voice: clearly and compellingly written by an experienced teacher and scholar who knows how to emphasize intriguing and eye-opening elements of Western Civilization
* A book with a point of view: even if disagreed with, the text will at engage students' minds
* Exceptional coverage of cultural history , especially the history of what people thought and felt throughout the history of the West
* "Greater West" approach that integrates in sustained fashion coverage of Islam and the Middle East
* Superior coverage of Jewish history and the history of women
* Extensive primary source excerpts integrated directly into the text, many of which have been translated by the author
* Footnotes featuring surprising, engaging information usually neglected in other texts
narrative of this book.
The Cultures of the West stands apart from other textbooks in a variety of ways, the first being thematic unity. What did people think and believe, throughout our history, about human nature, the right way to live, God, the best forms of government, or the meaning of human life? Rather than
maintaining a single interpretive stance, author Clifford R. Backman relies upon a consistent set of questions: What did people think and feel throughout the centuries about politics, science, religion, and sex? How did they come to their positions regarding the right way to live? Backman's many
years of experience in the classroom have informed his approach-students respond to engaging questions more than they are inspired by facts.
Features:
* Single author voice: clearly and compellingly written by an experienced teacher and scholar who knows how to emphasize intriguing and eye-opening elements of Western Civilization
* A book with a point of view: even if disagreed with, the text will at engage students' minds
* Exceptional coverage of cultural history , especially the history of what people thought and felt throughout the history of the West
* "Greater West" approach that integrates in sustained fashion coverage of Islam and the Middle East
* Superior coverage of Jewish history and the history of women
* Extensive primary source excerpts integrated directly into the text, many of which have been translated by the author
* Footnotes featuring surprising, engaging information usually neglected in other texts
672 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2012
6 people are currently reading
124 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 30, 2017
I used this as a textbook for an online, accelerated course on the origins of western civ (first half). It's not a perfect textbook, but I was pretty happy with it overall. Backman is a good writer, and there's a light, conversational tone that's rare in textbooks. I also very much appreciated his decision to view "the west" as the broader Mediterranean region, rather than just western Europe. There's quite a bit in here about the Islamic world, outside of the crusades and the Islamic impact on the twelfth-century renaissance.
It is also cheap (by textbook standards), which I am learning is a rarity worth praising.
It is also cheap (by textbook standards), which I am learning is a rarity worth praising.
December 24, 2025
Used this for a Western Civ Course. Was wonderful. Not always the most in depth but that makes sense as it covered a broad range of information in a relatively short number of pages for the year range. Perfect for finding introductory subjects across the years.
August 3, 2016
This book includes a companion volume, Sources for Cultures of the West: Volume 1: To 1750, which is reviewed elsewhere.
The writing is superb, which is an incredible thing to say about a textbook. It's often entertaining, with humorous asides and lots of narrative detail. The descriptions of events are vivid and engaging. When he gets bogged down in questions of philosophy and religion, which sadly happens more often than I would like, the text slows way down and reading becomes a chore.
This is a history more of ideas than of happenings. Backman spends a lot of time exploring the grand thoughts of Western culture, particularly the Abrahamaic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). He covers ancient history with considerable detail and I came away feeling like I had a solid grasp of the material. Things get skimpier in the middle ages, as there are so many more countries to cover and the author starts jumping around from place to place and topic to topic. His exploration of the late middle ages is so thin as to be practically nonexistent, and it left me more confused than enlightened.
Still, the book is a solid five stars up through the Arab conquests, and quite good even after that. The maps and illustrations are detailed and well-designed, with excellent captions. The quotations come from a huge variety of sources and do a marvelous job of supporting the text. If the book sometimes seems to be skimming over entire centuries, well, that's the inevitable drawback of a one-volume history of the Western world.
The writing is superb, which is an incredible thing to say about a textbook. It's often entertaining, with humorous asides and lots of narrative detail. The descriptions of events are vivid and engaging. When he gets bogged down in questions of philosophy and religion, which sadly happens more often than I would like, the text slows way down and reading becomes a chore.
This is a history more of ideas than of happenings. Backman spends a lot of time exploring the grand thoughts of Western culture, particularly the Abrahamaic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). He covers ancient history with considerable detail and I came away feeling like I had a solid grasp of the material. Things get skimpier in the middle ages, as there are so many more countries to cover and the author starts jumping around from place to place and topic to topic. His exploration of the late middle ages is so thin as to be practically nonexistent, and it left me more confused than enlightened.
Still, the book is a solid five stars up through the Arab conquests, and quite good even after that. The maps and illustrations are detailed and well-designed, with excellent captions. The quotations come from a huge variety of sources and do a marvelous job of supporting the text. If the book sometimes seems to be skimming over entire centuries, well, that's the inevitable drawback of a one-volume history of the Western world.
January 2, 2016
Two of my college history classes (same course, two sections) used vol. 1 and then vol. 2. These books are written in an easy-to-read, sometimes even casual, fashion. Before college, I wasn't big on history because of the assigned textbooks being so dry and sticky to read. This is very well-written. I've even kept the textbooks, rather than selling them back to the college bookstore.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews