Wandering Sage’s Reviews > The Uniqueness of Western Civilization > Status Update

How is the book so far?

Hello there! The book seems well-researched so far but I'm only around 3 chapters in. There is a lot of statistical data in the first few chapters about industry and food production in the east vs. west over the course of the last couple thousand years and especially the last few hundred years. This seems to have been included to argue against some more recent scholarship denigrating the West's achievements vs. China and the East's achievements. Some scholars seem to have an axe to grind against the West for various reasons and this part of the book seeks to set the record straight on a few of their premises and interpretations of the historical data.

It feels a bit like background detail that's needed before digging into particular aspects of Western ideology and how they influenced our development on the world stage. The latter chapters seem to be more focused on these particular ideological differences, which I'm more interested in studying.

Very good, thank you for the overview! I read a wonderful review of the book which only described the second part of the book (his philosophical theory of Western culture), and it fascinated me. I love Spengler's theory of history and Duchesne's seems to tie right into it. I wrote a review of a review of this book, funnily enough, because the ideas described in the book resonated with me so much.