
Morris's sweeping 15,000-year history explains why the West dominates today - not through cultural superiority but geography and human ingenuity. Praised by Jared Diamond as "an exciting novel that happens to be true," this award-winning work reveals whether Eastern powers will soon reclaim global leadership.
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When British forces burned China's Summer Palace in 1861, they sent Queen Victoria a stolen Pekinese dog named "Looty" - a perfect symbol of Western dominance. Yet just decades earlier, Europeans had desperately sought access to Chinese markets, dismissed as barbarians by a confident empire. This dramatic power reversal frames Ian Morris's central question: Why does the West rule today? And more importantly, will it continue to do so? Moving beyond both Western triumphalism and anti-Western sentiment, Morris reveals how geography, not cultural or biological superiority, created today's power dynamics - and how they might soon dramatically shift again.