In "The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives," prize-winning historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney unpacks the myths and origin stories that underpin the history we thought we knew about western civilization and examines the institutions and structures that have been built on this shaky foundation, through the lives and times of fourteen remarkable individuals from antiquity to modern day.
These fourteen figures each played a role in the creation and execution of the Western idea. These characters span millennia and the continents, representing different religions, varying levels of wealth and education, diverse traditions and nationalities. Each life tells us something unexpected about the age in which it was lived and offers us a piece of the puzzle of how the modern idea of the West developed, why we've misunderstood it for too long, and how it still persists today.