What is it exactly that made for the greatness of Western Civilization? Why did it have its ups and downs ... and where do things seem headed today?
Ultimately, this two-volume series is as much a political-moral teaching as it is a presentation of the details of the West's wonderful (and sometimes tragic) historical record. It narrates the good and the bad choices that our leaders and our people have made over the many centuries since ancient times to the present ... and what lessons we should derive from this narrative so that we are able to move into the future making the good and not the bad choices - politically, socially, culturally and intellectually ... but above all, morally.
This first volume takes up with the rise and fall of ancient Greece - focusing especially on the city of Athens, and the good and bad choices it made. It then moves on to Alexandrian, Roman and Judaic times ... forming the backdrop to the central and lasting role that Christianity would come to play in Western civilization. It covers the "Christian West" through the Dark Ages, the challenge of Islam, the West's gradual recovery in the late Middle Ages ... and then the Renaissance - and the beginning of the West's global greatness. It covers the religious splintering of Christendom during the days of the Protestant Reformation, and the political resolve finally to simply let the various ruling dynasties decide the moral-spiritual fates of the lands they ruled over. It then brings us to the modern "awakenings" both religious and scientific ... and the resolve of mere commoners to take their political destinies into their own hands - working beautifully in English America and disastrously in Revolutionary France. It concludes (mid-1800s) with something of a compromise as the ruling dynasties attempt to work more closely with the ethnic ambitions of the people under their rule.