Rassela's question -- Competition -- Two rivers -- The eunuch and the unicorn -- The spice race -- The mediocre kingdom -- Science -- The siege -- Micrographia -- Osman and Fritz -- Tanzimat tours -- From Istanbul to Jerusalem -- Property -- New worlds -- Land of the free -- American revolutions -- The fate of the Gullahs -- Medicine -- Burke's prophecy -- The Jiggernaut of war -- M�edecins sans fronti�eres -- The skulls of Shark Island -- Black shame -- Consumption -- The birth of the consumer society -- Turning western -- Ragtime to riches -- The jeans genie -- Pyjamas and scarves -- Work -- Work ethic and work ethic -- Get your kicks -- The Chinese Jerusalem -- Lands of unbelief -- The end of days? -- Conclusion : the rivals.

A history of Western civilization's rise to global dominance offers insight into the development of such concepts as competition, modern medicine, and the work ethic, arguing that Western dominance is being lost to cultures who are more productively utilizing Western techniques.

"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. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? In Civilization: The West and the Rest, bestselling author Niall Ferguson argues that, beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts that the Rest lacked: competition, science, the rule of law, consumerism, modern medicine, and the work ethic. These were the "killer applications" that allowed the West to leap ahead of the Rest, opening global trade routes, exploiting newly discovered scientific laws, evolving a system of representative government, more than doubling life expectancy, unleashing the Industrial Revolution, and embracing a dynamic work ethic. Civilization shows just how fewer than a dozen Western empires came to control more than half of humanity and four fifths of the world economy"--Provided by publisher.