The Modernization

of the Western World

The Modernization of the Western World presents an overview of the history of

Western civilization and provides readers with the intellectual tools they need to
comprehend how societies function and change. Covering Western history from
ancient history to the current era of globalization, it draws on the tradition of
historical sociology to describe the forces of social change and what they have
meant to the lives of the people caught in the midst of them.
This second edition is revised throughout to bring the content up to date with
recent developments and discusses key themes such as terrorism, refugees, the
European Union, and multinational corporations. It also includes a new chapter
on the Ancient World, covering this era from the advent of urbanization and
agriculture in the Middle East to the fall of Rome and emergence of Christianity,
providing valuable historical context.
Clear and concise, this book succinctly illustrates the essential turning points in
the history of Western society and identifies the economic, social, political, and
cultural forces that are transforming the wider world to this day. Illustrated with
maps and images, and containing a glossary and new boxed features explaining
key concepts, this is the perfect introductory book for students of the development
of Western civilization.

John McGrath is Associate Professor of Social Sciences at Boston University,

USA. His publications include The French in Early Florida: In the Eye of the
Hurricane (2000).

Kathleen Callanan Martin is Senior Lecturer of Social Sciences at Boston

University, USA. Her publications include Hard and Unreal Advice: Mothers,
Social Science and the Victorian Poverty Experts (2008).
The Modernization
of the Western World
A Society Transformed
Second Edition

John McGrath and

Kathleen Callanan Martin
with Jay P. Corrin, Michael G. Kort,
Susan Hagood Lee, John W. Mackey,
and Benjamin E. Varat
Second edition published 2018
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, John McGrath and Kathleen
Callanan Martin; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of the John McGrath and Kathleen Callanan Martin to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
First edition published by M. E. Sharpe in 2012
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-138-06854-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-06856-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-15779-5 (ebk)

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Contents

List of Illustrations ix
List of Maps xi
List of Figures xiii
List of Contributors xv
Preface xvii
Acknowledgments xix

1 The Modernization of the Western World 1

JOHN MCGRATH AND JAY P. CORRIN

2 Modernization and Social Change 8

KATHLEEN CALLANAN MARTIN

3 The Ancient and Classical Inheritance 17

JOHN MCGRATH

4 Europe in the Middle Ages: Medieval Society 34

JOHN MCGRATH

5 The Late Middle Ages and the Transformation of

Medieval Society 45
JOHN MCGRATH

6 The Italian Renaissance 55

KATHLEEN CALLANAN MARTIN AND JOHN MCGRATH

7 The Reformation 65
SUSAN HAGOOD LEE
vi Contents
8 Commerce, Cities, and Capitalism 79
JOHN MCGRATH

9 The Centralization and Rationalization of the Political State 93

JOHN MCGRATH

10 The Enlightenment 105

JOHN MCGRATH

11 The French Revolution 112

JOHN MCGRATH

12 The Industrial Revolution 129

JOHN W. MACKEY

13 Classical Liberalism and the Bourgeois State 143

KATHLEEN CALLANAN MARTIN

14 Karl Marx and the Socialist Response to Capitalism 153

KATHLEEN CALLANAN MARTIN

15 Nationalism and Nations 161

JOHN W. MACKEY

16 The Age of Empire 170

JOHN W. MACKEY

17 The Great War 181

BENJAMIN E. VARAT

18 Europe between Wars 196

JAY P. CORRIN

19 The Rise of Fascism 207

JAY P. CORRIN

20 Total War: World War II 221

MICHAEL G. KORT

21 The Cold War 242

BENJAMIN E. VARAT
 Contents vii
22 Globalization and Social Change 256
JOHN MCGRATH

23 Terror and Terrorism 271

JOHN MCGRATH

Index 284
Illustrations

4.1 The fortified town of Carcassonne, Southern France, built

in the thirteenth century 42
7.1 Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, 1521 70
8.1 Spanish galleon, sixteenth century 82
11.1 The execution of King Louis XVI, 1793 123
12.1 Women workers, textile factory, nineteenth-century England 138
16.1 British engineers like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, shown here
with the massive anchor chains for his new steamship,
revolutionized transportation and enabled the building
of a vast empire 171
17.1 British troops advance during gas attack, 1917 189
20.1 Atomic cloud over Hiroshima, Japan, 1945 237
21.1 “Checkpoint Charlie,” at the border of East and
West Berlin, 1960s 250
Maps

3.1 The Roman Empire at its furthest extent, 117 CE 29

5.1 Late medieval trade routes 46
9.1 Europe, 1648 97
16.1 World 1914 colonial claims 177
18.1 Europe after the Peace of Paris, 1921 201
21.1 Proxy wars, 1945–1989 249
Figures

12.1 Relative share of world manufacturing output, 1750–1900 130

22.1 World population growth 265
Contributors

Kathleen Callanan Martin is Senior Lecturer of Social Sciences at Boston

University, USA. Her publications include Hard and Unreal Advice: Mothers,
Social Science and the Victorian Poverty Experts (2008).
Jay P. Corrin is Professor of Social Science and Chair of the Division of the Social
Sciences at the College of General Studies, Boston University, USA. His
graduate degrees are from the University of Hawaii (MA, Asian History) and
a PhD from Boston University in Modern European and British History. He
is an intellectual historian and has written books and articles on the Catholic
religion and politics, the most recent of which is a study of the English Catholic
New Left. He is also a co-author of Modernization and Revolution in China
(2009).
Professor Susan Hagood Lee is a sociologist whose work focuses on women
in the developing world. She is the author of “Rice Plus”: Widows and Economic
Survival in Rural Cambodia (2006) and is a non-governmental observer at
the United Nations. She is also the Rector of St. Luke’s Church in Fall River,
Massachusetts, USA.
Michael G. Kort is Professor of Social Science at the College of General Studies,
Boston, USA. He is the author of The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath
(2014); The Columbia Guide to the Cold War (2001); The Columbia Guide to
Hiroshima and the Bomb (2012); and A Brief History of Russia (2008); and a
co-author of Modernization and Revolution in China (2009). He has also
written more than a dozen books on a variety of topics for young adult readers.
John W. Mackey is Senior Lecturer and Chair of the Division of Social Sciences
at the College of General Studies, Boston University, USA. He holds an MA
and PhD in History from Boston College, and a BA from Dickinson College.
His work has appeared in Salon, BU Today, and We’re History. He is on Twitter
at @ProfMackey.
John McGrath is Associate Professor of Social Sciences at Boston University,
USA. His publications include The French in Early Florida: In the Eye of the
Hurricane (2000).
xvi Contributors
Benjamin Varat is Senior Lecturer of Social Sciences and History at the College
of General Studies, Boston University, USA. He received his BA from Trinity
College of Hartford, Connecticut in 1993 and completed his PhD in History
at Boston University in August 2005. He currently is turning his dissertation,
an analysis of French-American relations between 1958 and 1963, into a
manuscript for publication.
Preface

Over the centuries, practically every society has thought it important to know
something about the past. Even before the development of writing, people have
meticulously memorialized the reigns of leaders, kept records of births or harvests,
or commemorated great events like wars, catastrophes, and migrations. With the
passing of years, such information, even as it was often blended with religion or
folkways, created a cultural context that helped to explain the eternal questions
of “Who are we? And where did we come from?” Frequently the history of a given
society can attain a sacred quality that provides essential guidance and knowledge
for the individuals who belong to it.
The contributors to this volume believe that knowledge of the past is equally
essential for people in the modern world, to help us make informed choices that
will serve both ourselves and the larger society. But it is not enough for students
to learn simply what happened. It is at least equally important for people to
need to know why. Especially in today’s information-rich global society, there is a
far greater need for people who understand how the world works than there is for
successful Jeopardy! contestants. The questions of “Who are we?” and “Where
did we come from?” remain critically important ones to consider if we are to
untangle the challenges presented by an ever more complex global society.
We have developed this book over the course of many years teaching in an
undergraduate liberal arts program, the College of General Studies at Boston
University. As professors in the Social Science Division, we have been charged with
the task of developing a two-semester curriculum suitable for incoming freshman
students who arrive with a spectrum of backgrounds, academic skills, and interests.
As the student body has changed, our course has evolved to meet their needs, and
so too has the material that we ask them to study. This book is largely the product
of our course.
In both the course and the book, we draw on the tradition of historical
sociology, which is today far less in evidence on university campuses in the United
States than in Europe. In reaction to grand schemes of historical evolution and
societal convergence that were fashionable within living memory, many American
historians are understandably wary of attempts to force the messy and complex
details of history into preordained pigeonholes. Our course makes no such
attempt. What we do is to explore the basic questions about an individual’s
xviii Preface
relationship to his society and to history: How does society shape us? How do the
institutions and ideas we inherit from previous generations influence—and even
constrain—our choices in making history of our own? How is social change
possible, and what effect does it have on the people who experience it? How did
the world we inhabit come into being, and what are the implications of its present
organization for our future?
Our course begins with an introduction to social science methodology, primarily
sociology, to give our students some basic intellectual tools to comprehend how
societies function and change. Rather than presenting a smorgasbord of concepts
and terminology, we have had great success using a social-theory approach that
relies on ideas of the early pioneers of social science, especially Émile Durkheim,
Karl Marx, and Max Weber. Once our students have armed themselves with a basic
understanding of social dynamics, we then turn our attention to the study of
Western society as it emerged from the world of antiquity and became “modern.”
Over the rest of the year we bring our students into the present, helping them
learn how the West developed a way of life that was fundamentally different
from any that had appeared before. In doing so, Western society unleashed
powerful economic, social, political, and cultural forces that are transforming the
wider world.
The approach we use here focuses on these forces of social change, and what
they have meant to the lives of the people caught in the middle of them. As
opposed to more traditional courses, we are selective with the choice of the material
we ask our students to learn. Our experience with more conventional history
textbooks, such as the expensive Western Civilization texts we had periodically
used, taught us that today’s students can be overwhelmed with “facts” that induce
boredom (or worse) if they lack a meaningful context. In our course and in this
book, we cannot omit entirely names, dates, and so on, but we use them only when
they help illustrate essential turning points, problems and accomplishments
in the history of Western society. In other words, facts are employed as a means to
the greater end of understanding how the modern world came to be. Over the
years, our students have resoundingly confirmed that this approach is far more
interesting, meaningful, and intellectually enriching than the typical historical
surveys they have previously encountered.
We anticipate that this book will be used as a course text, often together with
other readings, both secondary and primary. To facilitate the integration of
primary sources into a course framework, we have consciously devoted significant
attention to certain historical figures and their ideas (such as Machiavelli, Voltaire,
and J. S. Mill). Throughout the text we have also highlighted, in boldface type,
certain key terms and concepts that we want our students to take note of as they
are employed in the text.
Acknowledgments

The Modernization of the Western World has evolved as a collaborative effort by

editors, writers, colleagues, and other associates. We’d like to take the opportunity
here to express our thanks and appreciation. First and foremost, we’d like to stress
that, to a significant degree, this book is the product of thousands of classroom
hours, and thus we must credit our students for providing us with both ideas
and energy.
We would also like to acknowledge the support and encouragement of many
others in the College of General Studies (CGS) who, over the years, have helped
us put this course together. These include Barbara Storella, Natalie McKnight,
Tracey Dimant, Bob Oresick, Stacy Godnick, Danielle Vinciguerra, Matt Dursin,
Matt Hallgren, and Naomi Lomba-Gomes. Other CGS faculty, whose names do
not appear as authors but who have helped in various important ways, include
June Grasso, Ed Rafferty, Bill Tilchin, Leslie Kriebel, Shawn Lynch, Sam Deese,
Tom Whalen, Scott Marr, Polly Rizova, Jean Dunlavy, Cheryl Boots, and Robert
Wexelblatt. Without the contributions of all of these individuals, this project
would have been far more difficult and might never have been undertaken and
completed at all. Our editors at Routledge, Eve Setch and Amy Welmers, offered
intelligent suggestions and made the production process about as problem-free
as book production can be.
Finally, we’d like to express our appreciation for the folks on the home front
who have had to put up with, for years, our frequently incomprehensible ravings
and mutterings about bureaucracies, gemeinschafts, anomie, neomercantilism, the
Invisible Hand, and the like. We hope that this book will demonstrate that this
stuff actually does make sense.

J.M. and K.C.M.

Boston, MA
1 The Modernization
of the Western World
John McGrath and Jay P. Corrin

Key Terms
anomie, collective conscience, conflict theory, empiricism, modernization,
social norms, socialization, verstehen, wertfrei

Any understanding of how societies function and change requires some basic
understanding of the way that human beings interact. The fact that different
societies encourage different sorts of behavior is one of the things that makes
studying history and social science interesting. Yet beneath the obvious differ-
ences, there are also certain behavioral constants and commonalities shared by all
societies. Appreciating these aspects of social life provides an important key to
meaningful analysis.
To begin at the beginning, so to speak, we need to recognize that humans
have evolved over time to meet certain challenges to their survival. The first
anatomically modern humans survived on the savannas of Africa, tens of thou-
sands of years ago, because natural selection, operating over several million years,
had given them certain characteristics that made them successful as a species.
These included both physical attributes and intellectual qualities that allowed
them to meet their needs. Humans began to communicate, learn, and plan in ways
that were far superior to any previous creature.
Certain behavioral tendencies also helped people to survive. Like many other
species, humans fared best in groups that made it possible for them to act
cooperatively to meet the challenges of existence. Though there have been many
sizes and types of human groups, or “societies,” the survival of solitary individuals
has been immeasurably more difficult from earliest times right up until the present.
This is because collective action facilitated certain key activities, such as food
gathering, learning culture, child raising, and defense against human and animal
predators. Group living made this possible. The result is that humans have long
recognized the need to be “social animals,” and they have adjusted their emotions
and behavior accordingly.
This need for group living has only increased as societies have become more
“modern.” Over the history of humanity, our ancestors have nurtured their
unparalleled intellectual abilities to enable the creation of such complex entities
2 John McGrath and Jay P. Corrin
as languages, philosophical systems, and technologies. Such developments have
raised our standard of living by quantum leaps and transformed our world in
both literal and figurative senses. Doing so, however, has not lessened our reliance
on each other, but in fact has only increased it, and as our societies have become
more complicated, we as individuals have lost much of our self-sufficiency. In the
modern age, we still depend on social living for material and emotional survival,
and we possess a powerful urge to feel a sense of belonging to a larger group, or
what we call a “society.”
It is perhaps stating the obvious that this aspect of human behavior, the need
to belong, has been a central factor in the history of humanity, perhaps as much
as the need for food and protection, to which it is related. It has been a powerful
influence on the way that societies have evolved and changed, and the student
of history must keep this in mind. To put it another way, it is impossible to
understand history in any meaningful way without understanding the centrality
of society in the lives of individuals. Our study concentrates upon the social forces
that have created history and that continue to shape our destinies.

The Individual and Society

Social scientists analyze how social forces affect actions, ideas, and values. A
process known as socialization is a starting point in understanding the behaviors
of both individuals and groups, and it is an essential concept in the social sciences.
During socialization, an individual learns how a society works and the normal
behaviors expected from its members, or social norms. Understanding and con-
forming to social norms is how a person gains acceptance in a given society, and
during socialization people constantly adapt their behavior in response to the
reactions of others and their perceptions of these reactions. While much of this
learning may take place unconsciously during social interaction, socialization is
usually accomplished willingly and even eagerly, because it allows a person to feel
like a member of their society, imparting to them this precious sense of belonging.
Understanding the impact of socialization on both individual and collective
behavior is critical for understanding the workings of human societies. This basic
concept—the symbiotic relationship between individuals and society—underlies
much of the contribution made by the pioneers of sociology who emerged during
the industrial age more than a century ago. Living in societies that were confronting
rapid and complex social change, social scientists including Karl Marx, Émile
Durkheim, and Max Weber analyzed the impacts of such transformations. Their
studies focused upon how societies functioned and changed, and what this meant
for the relationship between the individual and the larger society. These three
social theorists, as well as others, contributed valuable principles of social behavior
that are highly relevant today, and which provide the foundation of this study.
Karl Marx (1818–1883) is best known to some people as the originator of
“Marxist” revolutionary doctrines, yet to reduce his ideas to these alone is to
undervalue his larger contributions to social theory. Much of his work, such as his
magisterial study Capital, provided an analysis of the operation and impact of
 The Modernization of the Western World 3
capitalist economic systems.1 As an observer of a rapidly industrializing Europe
that was fraught with social and political instability, Marx attributed many of the
problems of his age to what he considered the fatal flaws of industrial capitalism:
its promotion of inequality between social classes, its tendency toward monopoly,
and what he believed to be its inherent instability. Though Marx’s predictions of
inevitable revolution have proven to be mistaken, his critiques of capitalism and
its problems have proven to be prophetic. Moreover, social scientists and historians
who have employed the sociological perspective he originated, known as conflict
theory, where change is seen as the result of class conflict, have contributed many
insights that are useful for understanding the processes of social change.
The French social scientist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) applied a rigorous
methodology based on empiricism—the systematic analysis of past experience—to
the study of how societies functioned and evolved. Regarding any given society as
an entity in its own right, he examined the interplay of the subgroups and individuals
who comprised its parts.2 What held the parts together, and allowed them to work
together for the benefit of all, were common cultural elements that not only
provided direction but also gave a society’s members a sense of belonging. Chief
among these were what he called a “collective conscience,” a shared sense of values
often expressed as ethical and religious beliefs. It is from the collective conscience
that we derive our guidelines, or social norms, for proper social behavior; these not
only provide order and social cohesion, but also allow each individual to develop
the critically important sense that he or she belongs to a larger whole. In the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Durkheim first explained how the process
of social change could undermine traditional values and social structures, which
promoted the deadly social malaise he called “anomie,” where individuals have a
difficult time understanding changing roles and social norms. He argued that
anomie, or normlessness, was a particular danger in rapidly modernizing societies,
where the members had difficulties adjusting to changing social expectations and
consequently suffered from widespread despair. The phenomenon of anomie, in
turn, made it difficult for the larger society to function in a healthy way, and anomic
societies became vulnerable to a host of social problems.
Durkheim’s German contemporary Max Weber (1864–1920) developed many
of the central principles of modern sociological analysis, including many now-
standard sociological concepts and terms. Like Marx and Durkheim, he was
concerned about the impact of modernization, especially its tendency to make
individuals feel helpless in the midst of large social forces over which they had little
control. He had a particular interest in the development of new sorts of power
and authority in modern life, and he examined how the increasing dominance of
rational and formal social structures transformed individuals’ values and outlooks.3
He urged social scientists to always employ verstehen (a deeper understanding
based on an appreciation of the cultural views of the society itself) while maintaining
strict objectivity by taking a wertfrei (“value-free”) approach. Both of these have
become fundamental principles of modern social science.
These three social theorists collectively laid a lasting foundation for analytical,
empirical, and logical social analysis. They were concerned with identifying and
4 John McGrath and Jay P. Corrin
explaining the cause and effect behind social change, and understanding how
traditional societies could evolve into more complex entities that would continue
to evolve, often at accelerating rates. The problem of the individual’s relationship
to the larger society was a central issue in all of their work, and each believed that
understanding this was absolutely necessary for understanding historical processes.
Their theories and concepts, as well as contributions from other notable social
scientists, provide the foundation for our study of the modernization of the
Western world.

Modernization
Modernization, as a historical process, has had many different definitions
and interpretations. It is a relative term, and a modernizing society is one
that moves in a direction where certain aspects are becoming increasingly
important. These characteristic aspects are generally mutually reinforcing,
and it is often difficult to draw distinct borders between them. If one tried
hard enough, a person could probably identify dozens of social character-
istics that are found exclusively, or almost exclusively, in what we might
consider “modern” societies, but that many characteristics probably makes
a definition that is unwieldy and not especially useful.
For our purposes in this book, we use the term modernization to refer
to a process that has eight identifiable elements. In no particular order,
these are:

Rationalism
Specialization of Labor
Political Centralization
Bureaucracy
Urbanization
Faustian Ethos
Secularism
Individualism

Any society where these eight features—or even most of them—

are prominent can be considered to be “modern” to a significant degree.
As we will see, they are often interconnected. The precise nature of these
characteristics may differ considerably from one society to another, or
change over time; in fact, different people may even define them differently.
Yet as a template that is useful for understanding the nature of this
particular sort of social change, we have found that these characteri-
stics collectively give a reasonably thorough and useful definition of
modernization.
 The Modernization of the Western World 5
Modernization as a Process
Europe had a unique and globally transforming historical experience in that it gave
birth to what is recognized as modernization, a process of institutional and
individual change that produced revolutionary alterations in social structures
and human consciousness. Modernization defies facile definition, but for our
purposes we can consider it to be the transformation of a society from rural and
agrarian conditions to urban and industrial modes of living. This transformation
brings about certain predictable, mutually reinforcing elements. (See Box).
Modernization represents the most powerful engine in history for transforming
social institutions and human consciousness. It is a process that necessarily affects
all aspects of society. Historically, traditional patterns of social ordering have arisen
as solutions to challenges presented by the environment and by other societies, and
tradition allows a society to function, and even prosper, as a collective whole. As
we have seen, especially during the last 1,000 years, traditional societies have been
vulnerable to the transformative power of modernization, as it is expressed through
cultural, economic, and political forces. The rapid social change produced by
modernization can be both liberating and psychologically discombobulating,
depending on the cultural conditions in which the experience takes place. Durkheim
recognized this and sought to help the society around him adjust successfully to
the inevitable reality of modernization. Although he understood that it could be
destructive under many circumstances, he also recognized the potential benefits of
this process to increase prosperity, social tolerance, and individual freedom. In
today’s world, as in the past, there are efforts to utilize traditional elements, such
as religion, to thwart the onslaught of modernization, but historical evidence
suggests that it is a process that cannot be reversed. We must, instead, understand
how this process operates, and how it has operated in the past, so that we can take
advantage of the opportunities it presents to us.
What are the factors that produce modernization? There are a variety of
theoretical explanations, but the most pioneering and ultimately seminal were
provided by Marx and Weber. Marx believed social change was essentially the
product of economic forces. “It is not the consciousness of men that determines
their existence,” wrote Marx, “but, on the contrary, their social existence deter-
mines their consciousness.”4 These “conditions,” Marx insisted, were the product
of the ways in which societies meet their material needs. The expansion of wealth,
made possible by innovations in the productive process, enabled some groups to
control social institutions for their own benefit. This inequality would ultimately
lead to social conflict thereby bringing on social and economic change. For Marx,
the engine of history that led to modernization was fueled by conflict in the material
realm of society.
Weber, on the other hand, had a more nuanced view of modernization.
Although he appreciated the role of economic forces, he thought other factors
were also important, especially the commonly held views of a society. Social
change in Weber’s view was often the result of powerful, conflicting ideas and
values that arose out of a variety of cultural experiences. Putting it another way,
6 John McGrath and Jay P. Corrin
for Weber, consciousness could be the cause of social change not simply the effect
of other material factors.

The Modernization of the West

The thematic structure of this book draws on such perspectives to illustrate how
alterations in social structures and consciousness propelled Europe toward
conditions of modernity, giving birth to a set of dynamic economic and ideological
forces that literally transformed the world. The past presents us with many difficult
problems involving human behavior, and a social theory approach enables us to
gain valuable insights into many otherwise puzzling questions. These include, for
example: Why did the Reformation era unleash such savagery upon a society that
was becoming prosperous, literate, and intellectually sophisticated? What did the
constructive, rational ideas of the Enlightenment have to do with the arrival of
revolution and war, on an unprecedented scale, during the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries? How could a society that appeared to have achieved
such material progress over the course of the Industrial Revolution have seemed
so hell-bent on destroying itself in the first half of the twentieth century, apparently
fulfilling the direst warnings of observers like Marx, Durkheim, and Weber?
Examining these sorts of questions helps make sense of the past and helps us to
understand today’s world by explaining how we got here.
The issue of modernization also raises a host of essential questions relating
to the future: Can Europe’s sui generis experience as a “first-comer” to modern-
ization serve as a model for others? Is modernization the same as Westernization?
Does modernization mean that there will be a convergence of societal types?
How much of modernity is controlled and directed by human agency? Is mod-
ernization the product of large, impersonal forces that are beyond the control of
individual actors? Does the advancement of modernity require the destruction
of traditional and local cultures? In what ways have modern ways of living bene-
fited humankind? What is the impact of modernization on the natural environment?
Does modernization promote human rights? Will modernization ultimately lead
to democratic aspirations and free market capitalism?
As this book traces the first instance of modernization in world history, it
examines these sorts of questions. They are ambitious ones, to be sure, and it may
be that some, or even all, may never be answered definitively. However, they are
important questions to ask if one wants to comprehend the modern world. We
believe that the ideas of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber have never been more
relevant than they are today. Their approaches to the study of historical change
transform history from a collection of facts into a cohesive process that has
brought about the phenomenon of modernity. For citizens of the twenty-first
century to understand the world they live in, they must develop a sense of how
this process has worked in the past, and how it is still working today.
 The Modernization of the Western World 7
Notes
1 Marx’s best-known works are The Communist Manifesto (1848) cowritten with
Friedrich Engels, and the three volume Capital (1867, 1885, 1894). His 1847
Wage, Labour and Capital is a valuable introduction to his economic ideas.
2 Durkheim’s three major works are The Division of Labor in Society (1892), Suicide
(1897) and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912).
3 Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) and Economy
and Society (1922) are among his most influential works, though he contributed
numerous other studies of religion, power, and economics.
4 Karl Marx,“Preface,” A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, www.
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
(1857), 1.

Suggested Readings
Durkheim, Émile. The Division of Labor in Society. Trans. W. D. Halls. New York: Free
Press, [1893] 1997.
———. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Oxford University Press,
[1912] 2008.
———. Suicide. New York: Free Press, [1897] 1997.
Marx, Karl. Preface, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. www.marxists.
org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
———. Wage, Labour and Capital. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ [1857].
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Ed. Samuel H. Beer.
Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, [1848] 1999.
Weber, Max. Economy and Society. Eds. Guenther Roth and Klaus Wittich. Berkeley:
University of California Press, [1922] 1978.
———. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Trans. Talcott Parsons.
London: Scribner’s, [1905] 1995.
The Modernization of the Western World
Durkheim, Émile . The Division of Labor in Society. Trans. W. D. Halls . New York: Free Press,
[1893] 1997.
Durkheim, Émile . The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Oxford University Press,
[1912] 2008.
Durkheim, Émile . Suicide. New York: Free Press, [1897] 1997.
Marx, Karl . Preface, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
Marx, Karl . Wage, Labour and Capital. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ [1857].
Marx, Karl , and Friedrich Engels . The Communist Manifesto. Ed. Samuel H. Beer . Wheeling,
IL: Harlan Davidson, [1848] 1999.
Weber, Max . Economy and Society. Eds. Guenther Roth and Klaus Wittich. Berkeley:
University of California Press, [1922] 1978.
Weber, Max . The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Trans. Talcott Parsons .
London: Scribner’s, [1905] 1995.

Modernization and Social Change

Chirot, Daniel . How Societies Change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forks Press, 1994.
Durkheim, Émile . The Division of Labor in Society. Translated by W. D. Halls . New York: The
Free Press, [1893] 1997.
Kalberg, Stephen . Max Weber’s Comparative Historical Sociology. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1994.
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels . The Communist Manifesto. Edited by Samuel H. Beer .
Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., [1848] 1955.
Nisbet, Robert A. The Sociological Tradition. New York: Basic Books, 1966.
Tönnies, Ferdinand . Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft). New
Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, [1887] 1996.
Weber, Max . The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons.
London: Scribner’s, [1905] 1995.

The Ancient and Classical Inheritance

Armstrong, Karen . The Bible: A Biography. New York: Grove Press, 2007.
Aubet, Maria E. The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade. 2nd Ed.
Translated by Mary Turton . London: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
De Blois, L. and R. J. van der Spek . An Introduction to the Ancient World. 2nd Ed. Trans.
Susan Mellor . London: Routledge, 2008.
Diamond, Jared . Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton,
1999.
Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. New
York: HarperOne, 2005.
Fagan, Brian . Floods, Famines, and Emperors. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
Fromkin, David . The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of the
Twenty-First Century. New York: Vintage, 2000.
Harari, Yuval Noah . Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. New York: Harper Collins, 2015.
Kinzl, Konrad H. , ed. A Companion to the Classical Greek World. Oxford: Blackwell, 2010.
McGeough, Kevin M. The Romans: An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Martin, Thomas R. Ancient Greece. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.
Snell, Daniel , ed. A Companion to the Ancient Near East. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.
Tignor, Robert L. Egypt: A Short History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Van de Mieroop, Marc . A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000–323 BC. 2nd Ed. London:
Blackwell, 2007.
Wade, Nicholas . Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors. New York:
Penguin, 2006.
Wertime, Theodore , ed. The Coming of the Age of Iron (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1980.

Europe in the Middle Ages

Backman, Clifford R. The Worlds of Medieval Europe. 3rd. ed. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014.
Bloch, Marc . Feudal Society. Vol. 2. Translated by. L. A. Manyon . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1961.
Cook, William R. , and Ronald B. Herzman . The Medieval Worldview. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011.
Duby, Georges . Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West. Translated by Cynthia
Postan . Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968.
Holmes, George . Oxford History of Medieval Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Lopez, Robert S. The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Southern, R.W. The Making of the Middle Ages. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953.

The Late Middle Ages and the Transformation of Medieval Society

Allmand, Christopher . The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c.1300–c.1450.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Campbell, Bruce . The Great Transition: Climate, Disease, and Society in the Late Medieval
World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Gottfried, Robert S. The Black Death. New York: Free Press, 1983.
Herlihy, David , and Samuel K. Cohn, Jr . The Black Death and the Transformation of Europe.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Kelly, John . The Great Mortality. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

The Italian Renaissance

Caferro, William , ed. The Routledge History of the Renaissance. Oxford and New York:
Routledge, 2017.
Clark, Kenneth . Civilisation: A Personal View. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.
Gottfried, Robert S. The Black Death. New York: Free Press, 1983.
Hibbert, Christopher . The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall. New York: Harper Perennial,
1974.
Holmes, George . The Oxford History of Medieval Europe. London: Oxford University Press,
1988.
Jardine, Lisa , Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance. New York: Norton, 1996.
Jensen, De Lamar . Renaissance Europe: Age of Recovery and Reconciliation. 2nd ed.
Lexington, MA: Heath, 1982.
Lopez, Robert S. The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Najemy, John N. Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, 1300–1550. London: Oxford University
Press, 2005.
Osborne, Roger . Civilization: A New History of the Western World. New York: Pegasus, 2006.
Speake, Jennifer and Thomas B. Bergin , eds. Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and
Reformation. revised ed. New York: Facts on File, 2004.
Waley, Daniel . The Italian City Republics. 3rd ed. New York: Longman, 1988.

The Reformation
Bainton, Roland H. The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. Boston: Beacon Press, 1952.
Kingdon, Robert . Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France, 1555–1562.
Geneva: Droz, 1956.
Lane, Tony . Harper’s Concise Book of Christian Faith. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984.
Lindberg, Carter . The European Reformations. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996.
MacCulloch, Diarmaid . The Reformation: A History. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
Mullet, Michael A. The A to Z of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Lanham, MD:
Scarecrow Press, 2010.
Murphy, Cullen . God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.
Roper, Lyndal . Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet. New York: Random House, 2017.
Weir, Alison . Henry VIII: The King and His Court. New York: Ballantine Books, 2002.
Wright, Jonathan . God’s Soldiers: A History of the Jesuits. Garden City, NY: Image Books,
2005.

Commerce, Cities, and Capitalism

Eisenstein, Elizabeth . The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1979.
Elliott, J. H. The Old World and the New, 1492–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992.
Fernández-Armesto, Felipe . Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonisation from the
Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1987.
Houston, R. A. “Colonies, Enterprises, and Wealth: The Economies of Europe and the Wider
World in the Seventeenth Century.” In Early Modern Europe: An Oxford History. Edited by Ewan
Cameron . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Kamen, Henry . Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492–1763. New York:
HarperCollins, 2003.
Koenigsberger, H. G. , George L. Mosse , and G. Q. Bowler . Europe in the Sixteenth Century.
2nd ed. London: Longman, 1989.
Phillips, J. R. S. The Medieval Expansion of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Phillips, William D. Jr. , and Carla Rahn Phillips . The Worlds of Christopher Columbus. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Scammell, G. V. The First Imperial Age: European Overseas Expansion, 1400–1715. London:
Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Vilches, Elvira . New World Gold: Cultural Anxiety and Monetary Disorder in Early Modern
Spain. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010.
Vives, Jaime Vicens . An Economic History of Spain. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1969.
Wallerstein, Immanuel . The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of
the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press, 1974.
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry , Early Modern Europe, 1450–1789. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2006.
The Centralization and Rationalization of the Political State
Anderson, Perry . Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: Verso, 1974.
Beik, William . Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth Century France. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985.
Cameron, Euan , ed. Early Modern Europe: An Oxford History. London: Oxford University
Press, 1999.
Coward, Barry . The Stuart Age., 3rd ed. London: Longman, 2003.
Guy, John . Tudor England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Heckscher, Eli . Mercantilism. Two volumes. London: Bradford and Dickens, 1962.
Miller, John . Absolutism in Seventeenth Century Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991.
Parker, Geoffrey . Europe in Crisis: 1598–1648. New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2001.
Parker, Geoffrey . ed. The Thirty Years’ War. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1997.
Wallerstein, Immanuel , The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the
European World-Economy, 1600–1750. New York: Academic Press, 1980.
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. Early Modern Europe, 1450–1789. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2006.
Wilkinson, Rich . Louis XIV. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Wolf, John B. Louis XIV. New York, Norton, 1974.

The Enlightenment
Artz, Frederick B. The Enlightenment in France. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1968.
Gay, Peter . The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism. New York: Norton, 1965.
Hampson, Norman . “The Enlightenment.” In Early Modern Europe: An Oxford History. Edited
by Euan Cameron , Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1999.
Heilbroner, Robert L. The Worldly Philosophers. 7th ed. New York: Touchstone, 1999.
Hyland, Paul . The Enlightenment. London: Routledge, 2003.
Osborne, Roger . Civilization: A New History of the Western World. New York: Pegasus, 2006.
Outram, Dorinda . The Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Pagden, Anthony . The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters. New York: Random House,
2013.
Tarnas, Richard . The Passion of the Western Mind. New York: Ballantine, 1991.

The French Revolution

Asprey, Robert B. The Rise and Fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. 2 vols. Boston: Little, Brown,
2000, 2002.
Bosher, J. F. French Finances 1770–1795: From Business to Bureaucracy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Darnton, Robert . The Literary Underground of the Old Regime. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1982.
Doyle, William . Origins of the French Revolution. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988.
Kaplan, Steven . Bread, Politics, and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV. The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1976.
McPhee, Peter . Liberty or Death: The French Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2016.
Neely, Silvia . A Concise History of the French Revolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
2008.
Popkin, Jeremy D. A Short History of the French Revolution. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 2002.
Schama, Simon . Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1991.
Scurr, Ruth . Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution. New York: Metropolitan
Books, 2006.
Voltaire . Candide. Edited and translated by Daniel Gordon . Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s,
1999.

The Industrial Revolution

Briggs, Asa . The Age of Improvement, 1783–1867. London: Longman, 1965.
Davidoff, Lenore , and Catherine Hall . Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle
Class, 1780–1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Heilbroner, Robert L. and William Milberg. The Making of Economic Society. 7th ed. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002.
Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Capital, 1848–1975. New York: Scribner, 1975.
Hobsbawm, E. J. “The Standard of Living During the Industrial Revolution: A Discussion.”
Economic History Review, 16, no. 1 (1963).
Kemp, Tom . Industrialization in Nineteenth-Century Europe. New York: Longman, 1985.
Laslett, Peter . The World We Have Lost. New York: Scribner, 1965.
Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Pantheon, 1964.
Thompson, E. P. “Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” Past and Present, no. 38
(1967).
Thompson, F. M. L. , ed. The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950, 3 vols.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Wiener, Martin J. English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1980.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Classical Liberalism and the Bourgeois State

Briggs, Asa . Victorian People: A Reassessment of Persons and Themes 1851–1867. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Heilbroner, Robert L. The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great
Economic Thinkers. New York: Touchstone, 1999.
Hobhouse, L.T. Liberalism. London: Oxford University Press, [1911] 1964.
Mill, John Stuart . On Liberty. New York: Classic Books of America, [1859] 2009.
Mill, John Stuart . The Subjection of Women. New York: Classic Books of America, [1869] 2009.
Mill, John Stuart . Utilitarianism. New York: Classic Books of America, [1861] 2009.
Smith, Adam . The Wealth of Nations. New York: Bantam Dell, [1776] 2003.
Tocqueville, Alexis de . Democracy in America. 2 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., [1835]
1945.

Karl Marx and the Socialist Response to Capitalism

Heilbroner, Robert L. The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great
Economic Thinkers. New York: Touchstone, 1999
McLellan, David . Karl Marx: His Life and Thought. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
Marx, Karl , and Friedrich Engels . The Communist Manifesto. In Selected Works of Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels. New York: International Publishers, [1848] 1972.
Newman, Michael . Socialism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Nationalism and Nations
Anderson, Benedict . Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.
Breuilly, John . Nationalism and the State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Gould, Stephen Jay . The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton, 1981.
Hobsbawm, Eric J. and Terence Ranger , eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Hobsbawm, Eric J. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Kohn, Hans . The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background. New York:
Macmillan, 1961.
Mosse, George L. Masses and Man: Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of Reality. New York:
Howard Fertig, 1980.
Niewyk, Donald L. , ed. The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques . The Social Contract. New York: Penguin Classics, 1968.
Smith, Anthony D. National Identity. London: Penguin, 1991.

The Age of Empire

Cain, P. J. , and A. G. Hopkins . British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688–1914.
London and New York: Longman, 1993.
Cannadine, David . Ornamentalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Cohn, Bernard S. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1996.
Cooper, Frederick , and Ann Laura Stoler , eds. Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a
Bourgeois World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Hall, Catherine , and Sonya O. Rose , eds. At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and
the Imperial World. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Hochschild, Adam . King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial
Africa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Hobsbawm, Eric J. The Age of Empire, 1875–1914. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987.
Marshall, P. J. , ed. The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire, Vol. III: The
Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Nettle, Daniel , and Suzanne Romaine . The Extinction of the World’s Languages. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002.
Porter, Andrew . Religion Versus Empire?: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas
Expansion, 1700–1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.
Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 1993.

The Great War

Hastings, Max . Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.
Hochschild, Adam . To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918. Boston:
Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.
Horne, Alistair . The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916. London: Penguin Books, 1962.
Joll, James , and Gordon Martel . The Origins of the First World War, 3rd ed. London: Pearson-
Longman, 2007.
Keegan, John . The First World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
Kennan, George F. Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1941. Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger
Publishing Company, 1960.
Kort, Michael . The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath, 7th ed. New York: M. E. Sharpe,
2010.
Liddell Hart , Captain B. H. The Real War, 1914–1918. Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
1930.
MacMillan, Margaret . The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914. New York: Random
House, 2013.
Meyer, G. J. A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914–1918. New York: Bantam Dell,
2007.
Remarque, Erich Maria . All Quiet on the Western Front. Translated by A. W. Wheen . New
York: Ballantine Books, 1929.
Winter, Jay , ed. The Cambridge History of the First World War: Volume 1, Global War.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Europe between Wars

Aldcroft, Derek H. From Versailles to Wall Street, 1919–1929. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1981.
Aldcroft, Derek H. The European Economy, 1914–2000. London: Routledge, 2001.
Ambrosius, Gerold , and William H. Hubbard . A Social and Economic History of Twentieth-
Century Europe. Translated by Keith Tribe and William H. Hubbard . Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press. 1989.
Bessel, Richard , Germany After the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Galbraith, John Kenneth . The Great Crash, 1929. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.
Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991. New York: Random
House, 1994.
Hochshild, Adam . To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion. New York: Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.
Keylor, William . The Twentieth-Century World: An International History. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1984.
Kindleberger, Charles . The World in Depression, 1929–1939. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1986.
Silverman, Dan P. Reconstructing Europe After the Great War. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1982.

The Rise of Fascism

Arendt, Hannah . The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: World, 1964.
Bracher, Karl Dietrich . The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National
Socialism. New York: Praeger, 1971.
Bullock, Alan . Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. New York: Penguin, 1962.
Cassels, Alan . Fascist Italy. New York: Thomas Crowell, 1968.
Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power: 1933–1939. London: Penguin Press, 2005.
Fest, Joachim . Hitler. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1974.
Gay, Peter . Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider. New York: Harper & Row. 1968.
Goldberg, Jonathan . Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini
to the Politics of Meaning. New York: Doubleday, 2009.
Herf, Jeffrey . Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the
Third Reich. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Herf, Jeffrey . The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust:
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
Kirkpatrick, Ivone . Mussolini: A Study in Power. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1964.
Mann, Michael . Fascists: New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Mussolini, Benito . Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions. Rome: Ardeta, 1935.
Nolte, Ernst . Three Faces of Fascism. New York: New American Library, 1969.
Ohler, Norman . Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany: London: Penguin, 2016.
Orlow, Dietrich . A History of Modern Germany: 1871 to the Present. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1987.
Paxton, Robert . The Anatomy of Fascism. New York: Knopf, 2004.
Payne, Stanley . A History of Fascism: 1914–1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1995.
Smith, Denis Mack . Mussolini. New York: Knopf, 1982.
Turner, Henry , ed. Reappraisals of Fascism. New York: New Viewpoint, 1975.

Total War
Davidowicz, Lucy S. The Holocaust and the Historians. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1981.
Davidowicz, Lucy S. The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston, 1975.
Drea, Edward J. MacArthur’s Ultra: Codebreaking and the War Against Japan, 1942–1945.
Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992.
Dziewanowski, M. K. War at Any Price: World War II in Europe. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1991.
Fischer, Klaus P. Nazi Germany: A New History. New York: Continuum, 1995.
Frank, Richard B. Downfall: The End of the Japanese Imperial Empire. New York: Random
House, 1999.
Giangreco, D. M. Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945–1947.
Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2009.
Glantz, David M. and Jonathan House , When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped
Hitler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
Gruhl, Werner . Imperial Japan’s World War Two, 1931–1945. New Brunswick: Transaction
Publishers, 2007.
Hastings, Max . Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944–1945. New York: Vintage, 2005.
Hastings, Max . Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45. New York: Knopf, 2008.
Kort, Michael . The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2007.
Lipstadt, Deborah . Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New
York: Plume, 1993.
Lyons, Michael J. World War II: A Short History. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson,
2004.
Maddox, Robert James . Weapons for Victory. Columbia and London: University of Missouri
Press, 1995.
Neillands, Robin . The Bomber War: The Allied Offensive Against Germany. Woodstock and
New York: Overlook Press, 2001.
Overy, Richard . Russia’s War: A History of the Soviet War Effort, 1941–1945. New York:
Penguin, 1997.
Spector, Ronald H. The Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan. New York: Free
Press, 1985.
Stromberg, Roland N. Europe in the Twentieth Century, 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1997.
Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Weinberg, Gerhard L. Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Wistrich, Robert S. Hitler and the Holocaust. New York: Modern Library, 2001.
Yahil, Leni . The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry. New York: Oxford University Press,
1987.

The Cold War

Applebaum, Anne . Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956. New York:
Doubleday, Random House, Inc., 2012.
Brands, Hal . Latin America’s Cold War. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
2010.
Conquest, Robert . Reflections on a Ravaged Century. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000.
Dinan, Desmond . Europe Recast: History of European Union. Boulder: Lynne Rienner
Publishers, 2004.
Fursenko, Aleksandr and Timothy Naftali . Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an
American Adversary. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.
Gaddis, John Lewis . Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American
National Security Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Gaddis, John Lewis . We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1997.
Haynes, James Earl and Harvey Klehr . Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Hogan, Michael . The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Europe,
1947–1952. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Hook, Steven W. and John Spanier . American Foreign Policy Since World War II. 20th ed.
Thousand Oaks, California: CQ Press, Sage Publications, Inc., 2016.
Jacobs, Seth . Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in
Vietnam, 1950–1963. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006.
Jacobs, Seth . The Universe Unraveling: American Foreign Policy in Cold War Laos. Ithaca,
New York: Cornell University Press, 2012.
Jones, Howard . Crucible of Power: A History of American Foreign Relations from 1897. 2nd ed.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.
Judt, Tony . Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. New York: The Penguin Press, 2005.
Karnow, Stanley . Vietnam: A History. 2nd ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.
Kempe, Frederick . Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on
Earth. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2011.
Keylor, William . The Twentieth Century World and Beyond: An International History Since
1900. 6th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Kinzer, Stephen . The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, And Their Secret World War.
New York: Times Books, Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2013.
Kort, Michael . The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath. 7th ed. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe,
2010.
Lowe, Keith . Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 2012.
Merriman, John . A History of Modern Europe: From the French Revolution to the Present, Vol.
2. 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.
O’Connell, Robert L. Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1989.
Springhal, John . Decolonization Since 1945: The Collapse of European Overseas Empires.
London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2001.
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Baldwin, Richard . The Great Convergence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016.
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Humbled the IMF. New York: Public Affairs, 2001.
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Terror and Terrorism

Hoffman, Bruce . Inside Terrorism. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
Horgan, John . The Psychology of Terrorism. 2nd ed. Kindle ed. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014.
Kalberg, Stephen , ed. Max Weber: Readings and Commentary on Modernity. Oxford: Wiley,
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Law, Randall D. Terrorism: A History. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016.
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Audrey Kurth Cronin and James M. Ludes . Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press,
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Stern, Jessica and J. M. Berger . ISIS: The State of Terror. New York: Ecco/Harper Collins,
2015.
Townshend, Charles . Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction. Kindle ed. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002.
Vaughn, Lewis . Doing Ethics. 3rd ed. New York: WW Norton, 2013.
Zimbardo, Philip . The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. New York:
Rider, 2007.