How the World Made the West: Josephine Quinn with Ken Chen

How the World Made the West poses a bold challenge to “civilizational thinking” on the origins of Western culture—that is, the idea that civilizations arose separately and distinctly from one another. Rather, Josephine Quinn locates the roots of the modern West in everything from the law codes of Babylon, Assyrian irrigation, and the Phoenician art of sail to Indian literature, Arabic scholarship, and the metalworking riders of the Steppe. The ancient Greeks and Romans themselves, she finds, consistently presented their own cultures as the result of contact and exchange. Drawing on the art, literature, and artifacts of the times as well as the latest scientific findings in carbon dating and human genetics, Quinn replaces the myth of the West with a lively new understanding of world history.

Josephine Quinn worked on How the World Made the West: A 4,000 Year History during her 2019-2020 Fellowship at the Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. She will discuss her book with award-winning poet Ken Chen.