- Published: 30 September 2011
- ISBN: 9781446442838
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 560
Civilization
A New History of the Western World
- Published: 30 September 2011
- ISBN: 9781446442838
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 560
The book is a brilliant example of authorial brevity, the writing neither hurried nor baldly functional
Edward Vallance, BBC History Magazine
An immensely important book and an exhilarating read
Gregor Dallas, Literary Review
It is a bold adventurer who proposes to survey the history of Western civilization in a mere 500 pages, and not only to say something fresh about many aspects of it, but to do so in a spirit of perceptive scepticism that refuses to go along with standard views and reflex valuations. Roger Osborne offers himself this challenge and meets it brilliantly
A.C. Grayling, Independent on Sunday
Osborne's book is a blessing.... Two weeks in, and the year's first necessary book is with us
Christopher Bray, Daily Telegraph
Roger Osborne's absorbing blockbuster... is an admirable achievement: a coherent narrative that gallops from the painting of the Lascaux buffalo to the cloning of Dolly the Sheep, from the Beaker people to the McDonald's people, in fewer than 500 crisply written pages
Boyd Tonkin, Independent
Urgent, compelling, breathtaking in scope, Osborne's Civilization confronts the vital question of our time
John Carey