The 10 Stories

Here are the stories I'll be telling through my blog, 10 Stories: The History of the West in Ten Tales.  You might ask what, for example, Mesopotamian history has to do with "the west".  Basically, I want to tell the story of all the antecedents of ancient Greek culture, so as to understand it.  So that involves studying Egypt and the Fertile Crescent.

I. The Rise of Prehistoric Man: From the Dawn of Man to the Halaf Culture

II. The Rise and Fall of the Early Great States: From Eridu to the Bronze Age Collapse and the Ancient Dark Ages.

III. The Formation and Rise of Classical Civilization: From Homer to Marcus Aurelius

IV. The Decline and Dissolution of Classical Civilization: From Commodus to the Execution of Boethius

V. The Rise and Reign of the Res Publica Christiana: From Gregory the Great to Boniface VIII

VI. The Decline and Fall of the Res Publica Christiana: From Philip the Fair to Charles V and Martin Luther

VII. The Reign of the Princely State: From Henry VIII to Louis XIV

VIII. The Age of Enlightenment: From Newton to Kant

IX. The Rise and Reign of Liberalism: From the French Revolution to the Chicago World’s Fair

X. The Age of Etatism: From the Spanish American War to the Present

I will not tell these stories in one long succession. Rather, I will cycle through these stories with every post. For example, I will have one post on Story I, and then a post on Story II. After I cycle through all the other stories, I will return to Story 1 and advance it, and so on.

More details and elucidations forthcoming.