Why the West Rules—For Now

Archaeologist Morris (Classics & history, Stanford Univ.; coauthor, The Greeks: History, Culture, and Society) draws on his vast knowledge of the ancient world in a risky attempt to make sense of the future as well as our past. He posits four benchmarks for comparing societies: their success or failure in energy capture, organization/urbanization, war making, and information technology/literacy. For each criterion, he provides measures of comparison that allow him to address the question of the West's dominance over the East in the past two centuries and to ask whether the West's lead is sustainable. He admits that the measures he uses are crude but argues that they allow us to examine dynamics of social change from early times onward. He predicts that, barring catastrophe, China will take the lead in 20 to 50 years. As with Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, Morris's conclusions will provoke controversy, but he asks the right questions. Ultimately, his book is more successful in its goals than Diamond's.