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The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition, Volume I: The Ancient World and Christendom
The Golden A History of the Western Tradition, by historians Allen C. Guelzo and James Hankins, will offer a truthful and fair-minded overview of the trajectory of the West—the complex system of customs, practices, and beliefs that has bound our society together—from the ancient Greeks and Romans to medieval Christendom and Europe, and finally the modern world and America.
1309 pages, Hardcover
Published August 26, 2025
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About the author
James Hankins
45 books40 followersJames Hankins is an American intellectual historian specializing in the Italian Renaissance. He is the General Editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library and the Associate Editor of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum. He is a professor in the History Department of Harvard University. In Spring 2018, he is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture.
In 2012 he was honored with the Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award of the Renaissance Society of America.
In 2012 he was honored with the Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award of the Renaissance Society of America.
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August 16, 2025WSJ review: https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/book...
(Paywalled. As always, I'm happy to email a copy to non-subscribers)
Excerpt:
“We have seen spread through our schools and institutions,” the authors write in their bracing introduction, “a malicious form of humility indistinguishable from self-hatred. This is a humility that humiliates, that seeks to blind Westerners to their magnificent traditions and to rub their noses, like misbehaving dogs, in their worst offenses.” ...
With graceful language and a splendid array of maps and photographs, the book makes plain how the operating assumptions of the West—equality under the law and the dignity of all persons, for example—so suffuse the air around us that we may forget that these truths are self-evident only to those within our cultural tradition. Had history unfolded otherwise, we might never have come to think as we do today. "
(Paywalled. As always, I'm happy to email a copy to non-subscribers)
Excerpt:
“We have seen spread through our schools and institutions,” the authors write in their bracing introduction, “a malicious form of humility indistinguishable from self-hatred. This is a humility that humiliates, that seeks to blind Westerners to their magnificent traditions and to rub their noses, like misbehaving dogs, in their worst offenses.” ...
With graceful language and a splendid array of maps and photographs, the book makes plain how the operating assumptions of the West—equality under the law and the dignity of all persons, for example—so suffuse the air around us that we may forget that these truths are self-evident only to those within our cultural tradition. Had history unfolded otherwise, we might never have come to think as we do today. "
November 24, 2025
Fabulous - a resource now and for the grandchildren.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews