Sign in with Facebook
2,669 books
—
6,702 voters
“was China in some sense a victim of its own success – stuck in a ‘high-level equilibrium trap’ by the ability of its cultivators to provide a vast number of people with just enough calories to live?”
― Civilization: The West and the Rest
― Civilization: The West and the Rest
“Only in the realm of political institutions does there remain significant global diversity, with a wide range of governments around the world resisting the idea of the rule of law, with its protection of individual rights, as the foundation for meaningful representative government. It is as much as a political ideology as a religion that a militant Islam seeks to resist the advance of the late twentieth-century Western norms of gender equality and sexual freedom.”
― Civilization: The West and the Rest
― Civilization: The West and the Rest
“without efficient public plumbing cities are death-traps,”
― Civilization: The West and the Rest
― Civilization: The West and the Rest
“The facile, if not tautological, answer to the question is that the West dominated the Rest because of imperialism.”
― Civilization: The West and the Rest
― Civilization: The West and the Rest
“A civilization is the single largest unit of human organization, higher though more amorphous than even an empire. Civilizations are partly a practical response by human populations to their environments – the challenges of feeding, watering, sheltering and defending themselves – but they are also cultural in character; often, though not always, religious; often, though not always, communities of language. 5 They are few, but not far between. Carroll Quigley counted two dozen in the last ten millennia.”
― Civilization: The West and the Rest
― Civilization: The West and the Rest
The Sword and Laser
— 21691 members
— last activity 9 hours, 29 min ago
Online discussion forum for the Sword and Laser podcast and monthly book club pick. Subscribe to the audio podcast: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podca ...more
Mickleby’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Mickleby’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
146 books
|
128 friends
24 books
|
54 friends
1 book
|
12 friends
12 books
|
39 friends
1 book
|
4 friends
Polls voted on by Mickleby
Lists liked by Mickleby
