Books by Ian Morris

The best-selling author of Why the West Rules-for Now examines the evolution and future of human values Most people in the world today think democracy and gender equality are good, and that violence and wealth inequality are bad. But most people who lived during the 10,000 years before the nineteenth century thought just the opposite. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, biology, and history, Ian Morris explains why. Fundamental long-term changes in values, Morris argues, are driven by the most basic force of all: energy. Humans have found three main ways to get the energy they need-from foraging, farming, and fossil fuels. Each energy source sets strict limits on what kinds of societies can succeed, and each kind of society rewards specific values. But if our fossil-fuel world favors democratic, open societies, the ongoing revolution in energy capture means that our most cherished values are very likely to turn out not to be useful any more. Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels offers a compelling new argument about the evolution of human values, one that has far-reaching implications for how we understand the past-and for what might happen next. Originating as the Tanner Lectures delivered at Princeton University, the book includes challenging responses by classicist Richard Seaford, historian of China Jonathan Spence, philosopher Christine Korsgaard, and novelist Margaret Atwood.

A bold and controversial rethinking of the role of war in human history and how it will shape our future, sure to provoke debate, from the bestselling author of Why the West Rules - For Now.

Set in Chicago, this title features Nix, a college instructor whose novel has flopped. Although he and his pregnant wife are struggling financially, their fortunes change when Nix is asked to ghostwrite the memoirs of publishing magnate Zira Fontaine.

In the last thirty years, there have been fierce debates over how civilizations develop and why the West became so powerful. The Measure of Civilization presents a brand-new way of investigating these questions and provides new tools for assessing the long-term growth of societies. Using a groundbreaking numerical index of social development that compares societies in different times and places, award-winning author Ian Morris sets forth a sweeping examination of Eastern and Western development across 15,000 years since the end of the last ice age. He offers surprising conclusions about when and why the West came to dominate the world and fresh perspectives for thinking about the twenty-first century. Adapting the United Nations' approach for measuring human development, Morris's index breaks social development into four traits--energy capture per capita, organization, information technology, and war-making capacity--and he uses archaeological, historical, and current government data to quantify patterns. Morris reveals that for 90 percent of the time since the last ice age, the world's most advanced region has been at the western end of Eurasia, but contrary to what many historians once believed, there were roughly 1,200 years--from about 550 to 1750 CE--when an East Asian region was more advanced. Only in the late eighteenth century CE, when northwest Europeans tapped into the energy trapped in fossil fuels, did the West leap ahead. Resolving some of the biggest debates in global history, The Measure of Civilization puts forth innovative tools for determining past, present, and future economic and social trends.

For courses in Greek History or Greek Civilization. Organized chronologically, this text presents a complete picture of Greek civilization as a history. It features sections on the art, architecture, literature, and thought of each period. This text presents students with the history of Greece from the prehistoric through the Mycenaean Period, the Dark Ages, the Classical Period, the Hellenistic, and the absorption of Greek culture by Rome.

Why does the West rule? This title answers this provocative question, drawing on 15,000 years of history and archaeology, and the methods of social science.

This study of the changing relationships between burial rituals and social structure in Early Iron Age Greece draws upon the ancient literary evidence and the relevant historical and anthropological comparisons to explain the transition to the city-state. It will be an invaluable resource for all archaeologists working with burial evidence, in whatever period.