The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community

The Rise of the West won the National Book Award for history in 1964. McNeill presents a comprehensive history of human civilization, arguing that human cultures have interacted at every stage of their development. He challenges the view that separate civilizations pursued independent paths, instead contending that major social changes across the world were triggered by new or newly important foreign influences, from the Neolithic beginnings of grain agriculture to the present. McNeill supports this thesis with a narrative account of world history that traces civilization's expansion from the Fertile Crescent both eastward and westward, leading to Western predominance in the modern age. This edition includes a retrospective essay titled "The Rise of the West after Twenty-five Years," in which McNeill reflects on how the book was shaped by the period in which it was written (1954–63). He discusses subsequent developments in historiography and suggests revisions to his original portrait of world history in light of these changes.