Western Heritage: A Reader

by The Hillsdale College History Faculty (Editor)

Book by

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Classics, School

782 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2010

Reviews

[Maya Joelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the vast majority of this for my Western Heritage class so I'm going to count it for my challenge. I really enjoyed my class and learned a lot about the history of western society. Even though I don't agree with every author in this book, I give it five stars for content. A good selection of important philosophers, theologians, political theorists, historians, etc. that everyone should read and know.

I have a few minor issues with the formatting but not enough to lose a star. Also, in order to best understand this you should really just come to Hillsdale College and take the class (I recommend Dr. Gamble ;). Or try the online class: https://online.hillsdale.edu/landing/... :)

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know this book altogether too well after essentially memorizing it for an unhealthy amount of context-free quote ids. Exams...*sigh* But it was great to get an overview of Western Civilization from the original texts! Someday I'll have to go through each of these 76 excerpts and read them in there entirety to add to Goodreads. (maybe to boost next years reading challenge ;)

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uf dah

[Cecilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good collection of primary sources relevant to the Western Tradition. I loved being able to read all these important documents and I definitely learned a lot. Some of them were pretty dry but others were fascinating. Great class as well.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The whole world diversity revisionist education it seems that the majority of students receive today does not necessarily let the student understand how we got where we are. For that matter, I am not sure a lot of students are prepared to grapple with how we got where we are.

Hillsdale has done us a great service by not writing a history textbook, per se, but by collecting the source documents that explain the two streams that led to the founding of the United States and also greatly influenced all of western heritage.

The result is a lot of serious reading and a lot of serious thinking. I know I learned a lot.