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The Victory of Reason
- How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
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Publisher's summary
In The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark advances a revolutionary, controversial, and long overdue idea: that Christianity and its related institutions are, in fact, directly responsible for the most significant intellectual, political, scientific, and economic breakthroughs of the past millennium.
In Stark's view, what has propelled the West is not the tension between secular and non-secular society, nor the pitting of science and the humanities against religious belief. Christian theology, Stark asserts, is the very font of reason: While the world's other great belief systems emphasized mystery, obedience, or introspection, Christianity alone embraced logic and reason as the path toward enlightenment, freedom, and progress.
That is what made all the difference. In explaining the West's dominance, Stark convincingly debunks long-accepted "truths". For instance, by contending that capitalism thrived centuries before there was a Protestant work ethic - or even Protestants - he counters the notion that the Protestant work ethic was responsible for kicking capitalism into overdrive.
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- Daniel
- 01-02-20
Absolutely incredible history book!
While I am devout Christian, and have always believed that Christianity was profoundly important to the development of the West, I had absolutely no idea how deep an impact Christianity had on the West and our modern world until I listened to this book. Rodney Stark is a national treasure and should be more widely known.
My one modest critique of this audiobook is that the narrator is a bit dry. I did have to rewind multiple times because I lost focus—I did not want to miss one line of this incredible book!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Golden
- 07-20-19
The Progress of Western Civilization Explained
The book does an excellent job explaining the root causes for the development of western civilization. It covers the development of science, technology, politics and capitalism. The book compares and contrast why these areas developed in the West and not in other countries with great clarity and logic.
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- Larry
- 11-27-18
Essential for today's changing times (2018)
this book shows that the essential elements of capitalism include the belief system of Christianity because of its reasoned approach to nature and to God. concise comprehensive well narrated full of details and facts. Rodney does it again.
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- Dr. David Odegard
- 09-07-18
Christians Have Every Reason to Rejoice
I love Rodney Stark. He is constantly challenging the flat accepted history with vital new interpretations of data creating a vivid and convincing sketch of the past in a sweeping panorama. Stark is a favorite.
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- Anonymous User
- 09-05-23
Arguably the best book ever
As a Harvard medical educated professor at Columbia University I am convinced this is one of the most enlightening books I have ever read. Thank you.
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- Peter D. Gehres
- 11-13-22
Great historical overview if the west's foundation
Great book that I would strongly recommend. The only down side is the truely awful sound editing of the recording
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- Jeff Gossmann
- 01-04-22
Fantastic
Thank you Rodney Stark for pointing out the clear connection between the prosperity of the West and it’s Christian commitment to reason and therefore freedom. Christianity’s ability to grow theologically and it’s foundation of a stable universe created by one God made room for the scientific revolution. It’s appreciation of private property, individualism, and innovation eventually gave birth to free markets and human flourishing. I wish everyone would read this excellent refutation of Marxist ideology.
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- Brad
- 07-12-21
Excellent overview of the sweep of capitalism
Easy to read and understand overview of the history of capitalism and its links to Christianity and other associated cultural developments that allowed for its rise.
Easy to understand and well documented with a considerable bibliography to support claims. Not just another book written entirely out of the author's idealogical views. I appreciate this whether I agree with the claims or not, at least the author gives me the opportunity to review his sources and make an opinion for myself.
Easy to read. Suitable for YA readers if you wanted to hand your teenager a book about history they would likely prefer over a typical text book.
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- I'ma Goodboy
- 03-26-21
EXCELLENT!
This should be required reading in colleges and high schools. Gives great insight into how the west came to be. Explanation of the myth of the dark ages lies lots into perspective.
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-28-20
Great
Technical but very informative. We already knew this but they are writing overtime to rewrite history. Thank you for preservation.
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- By: Rodney Stark
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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How did the preaching of a peasant carpenter from Galilee spark a movement that would grow to include over two billion followers? Who listened to this "good news," and who ignored it? Where did Christianity spread, and how? Based on quantitative data and the latest scholarship, preeminent scholar and journalist Rodney Stark presents new and startling information about the rise of the early church, overturning many prevailing views of how Christianity grew through time to become the largest religion in the world.
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A coherent, compelling, and challenging account
- By Paul Adams on 06-08-20
By: Rodney Stark
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God's Battalions
- The Case for the Crusades
- By: Rodney Stark
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In God's Battalions, award-winning author Rodney Stark takes on the long-held view that the Crusades were the first round of European colonialism, conducted for land, loot, and converts by barbarian Christians who victimized the cultivated Muslims. To the contrary, Stark argues that the Crusades were the first military response to unwarranted Muslim terrorist aggression.
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A lively and useful introduction
- By Tad Davis on 01-06-10
By: Rodney Stark
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Bearing False Witness
- Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History
- By: Rodney Stark
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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As we all know, and as many of our well-established textbooks have argued for decades, the Inquisition was one of the most frightening and bloody chapters in Western history, Pope Pius XII was anti-Semitic and rightfully called "Hitler's Pope", the Dark Ages were a stunting of the progress of knowledge to be redeemed only by the secular spirit of the Enlightenment, and the religious Crusades were an early example of the rapacious Western thirst for riches and power. But what if these long-held beliefs were all wrong?
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Historical Accuracy needed in modern world
- By bgdade on 01-12-17
By: Rodney Stark
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The Triumph of Faith
- Why the World Is More Religious than Ever
- By: Rodney Stark
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Everybody seems to take it for granted that the world is getting more secular - that faith is doomed by modernity. Scientists, secularists, and atheists applaud the change; religious believers lament it. But here's the thing: They're all wrong, and acclaimed author Rodney Stark has the numbers to prove it. The Triumph of Faith explodes the myth that people around the world are abandoning religion.
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Lots of amazing statistics, a clear thesis, lots of tangents
- By Mr. and Mrs.G on 07-06-16
By: Rodney Stark
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Owning the Earth
- The Transforming History of Land Ownership
- By: Andro Linklater
- Narrated by: J. Paul Guimont
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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The history and evolution of land ownership is a fascinating chronicle in the history of civilization, offering unexpected insights about how various forms of democracy and capitalism developed, as well as a revealing analysis of a future where the Earth must sustain nine billion lives. Seen through the eyes of remarkable individuals - Chinese emperors; German peasants; the 17th century English surveyor William Petty, who first saw the connection between private property and free-market capitalism.
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Interesting
- By S. Olsen on 06-30-15
By: Andro Linklater
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How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
- By: Walter Rodney, Angela Y. Davis - foreword
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated. In his magnum opus, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the West and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the repercussions of European colonialism in Africa remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.
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A Superb must read for everyone
- By Joy on 04-16-19
By: Walter Rodney, and others
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Millennium
- From Religion to Revolution: How Civilization Has Changed over a Thousand Years
- By: Ian Mortimer
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In Millennium, best-selling historian Ian Mortimer takes the listener on a whirlwind tour of the last 10 centuries of Western history. It is a journey into a past vividly brought to life and bursting with ideas, that pits one century against another in his quest to measure which century saw the greatest change. We journey from a time when there was a fair chance of your village being burned to the ground by invaders - and dried human dung was a recommended cure for cancer - to a world in which explorers sailed into the unknown and civilizations came into conflict.
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Bad ending - literally
- By John Gordon on 12-14-16
By: Ian Mortimer
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Civilization
- The West and the Rest
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrated by: Niall Ferguson
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The rise to global predominance of Western civilization is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five hundred years. All over the world, an astonishing proportion of people now work for Western-style companies, study at Western-style universities, vote for Western-style governments, take Western medicines, wear Western clothes, and even work Western hours. Yet six hundred years ago the petty kingdoms of Western Europe seemed unlikely to achieve much more than perpetual internecine warfare. It was Ming China or Ottoman Turkey that had the look of world civilizations.
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Thoughtful analysis of the ascendancy of the West.
- By Patrick on 05-25-13
By: Niall Ferguson
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How the West Won
- The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity
- By: Rodney Stark
- Narrated by: Kevin Foley
- Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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