The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (The Politically Incorrect Guides) - Softcover

Esolen, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1596980591 ISBN 13: 9781596980594

Publisher: Regnery, 2008

Synopsis

Everything you should know--but PC professors won't teach--about Western heritage.

Western civilization is the envy of the globe. It has given to the world universally accepted understandings of human rights (rooted in Judeo-Christian principles), created standards for art, music, and literature that have never been equaled, and originated political and social systems that have spread all across the planet.

Political correctness now obscures these and other truths about Western civilization. Leftists and Islamic jihadists find common cause in assailing Western "colonialism," "imperialism," and "racism" as its defining characteristics. Guilt-ridden Western leaders and public figures speak of their cultural patrimony in disparaging terms they would never dare to use about a non-Western culture. And in universities, "multicultural"-minded professors flatter students into believing they have nothing really to learn from Sophocles or Shakespeare.

But now, Professor Anthony Esolen--one of the team-teachers of Providence College's esteemed Development of Western Civilization Core Curriculum--has risen to the West's defense. The Politically Incorrect Guide(TM) to Western Civilization takes on the prevailing liberal assumptions that make Western civilization the universal whipping boy for today's global problems - and introduces you to the significant events, individuals, nations, ideas, and artistic achievements that make Western civilization the greatest the world has ever known.

Today, defending the West has become an urgent imperative: if we don't value what we have and what we have inherited, we will surely lose it. The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Western Civilization is an essential sourcebook for that defense.

About this title

About the Author

Anthony Esolen, Professor of English at Providence College, is the editor and translator of the Modern Library edition of Dante's Divine Comedy. He has published scholarly articles on Spenser, Shakespeare, Dante, and Tasso in various journals and is a senior editor and frequent contributor to Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity.

From the Back Cover

Christianity. Judaism. Dead white males. Old-fashioned morality. The traditional family. Tradition itself. Everything the liberals hate can be summed up in two words: Western civilization. Here is the ultimate Politically Incorrect Guide(tm): a sprightly, informative summary of the original source of all things politically incorrect from Moses, Caesar, and Christ, to Dante, Thomas More, and the Founding Fathers.

PC professors don't want you to know that:

* Patriarchy and civilization go hand-in-hand (just ask the ancient Romans)
* Modern science came from the Middle Ages (and a Biblical view of the universe)
* The Renaissance was the flowering of a specifically Christian and classical culture
* The "progressive ideas" of the nineteenth century led to the fascism, communism, and two world wars of the twentieth century

"`The glory that was Greece...the grandeur that was Rome'--not so long ago, these were the birthright of every educated American. But no more. If you had to name one thing that the vandals who've seized control on our college campuses don't want their students to learn, it would be Western civilization. More and more, we live with blinders on, ignorant of everything but current fads. In this sparkling book--the ultimate Politically Incorrect Guide(tm)--Anthony Esolen provides a fabulous introduction to the history and culture of the West. Esolen opens up a new world of people and ideas for those of us who live in the twenty-first century but don't want to be prisoners of the passing moment."
--Elizabeth Kantor, Ph.D., author of The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to English and American Literature

"An acclaimed translator of Dante, and a brilliant teacher of Western civilization, Professor Esolen is the perfect Virgil, guiding the student through the fugue-like influence of Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome."
--Russell Hittinger, William K. Warren Professor of Catholic Studies, University of Tulsa

"With a mind and heart well-formed by the very best that has made Western civilization both civil and great, Esolen vividly portrays our four-millennia drama in thought, politics, the family, art, poetry, architecture, war, peace, and the blessed intricacies of everyday life--his eye ever trained on the true, the good, and the beautiful, and rightly indignant of all that now threatens to reduce Western civilization to ashes and a new barbarism."
--Benjamin Wiker, Ph.D., author of 10 Books That Screwed Up the World

From the Inside Flap

Everything you should know--but PC professors won't teach--about our Western heritage

Western civilization is the envy of the globe. It has given to the world universally accepted understandings of human rights (rooted in Judeo-Christian principles), created standards for art, music, and literature that have never been equaled, and originated political and social systems that have spread all across the planet.

Unfortunately, the fog of political correctness now obscures these and other truths about Western civilization. Leftists and Islamic jihadists find common cause in assailing Western "colonialism," "imperialism," and "racism" as its defining characteristics. Guilt-ridden Western leaders and public figures speak of their cultural patrimony in disparaging terms they would never dare to use about a non-Western culture. And in the academy, "multicultural"-minded professors flatter students into believing they have nothing really to learn from Sophocles or Shakespeare.

But now, Professor Anthony Esolen--one of the team-teachers of Providence College's esteemed Development of Western Civilization Core Curriculum--has risen to the West's defense. The Politically Incorrect Guide(TM) to Western Civilization takes on the prevailing liberal assumptions that make Western civilization the universal whipping boy for today's global problems, and introduces you to the significant events, individuals, nations, ideas, and artistic achievements that make Western civilization the greatest the world has ever known.

Today--with the West imperiled as never before by the global jihad and threats from China and elsewhere--defending the West has become an urgent imperative: if we don't value what we have and what we have inherited, we will surely lose it. The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Western Civilization is an essential sourcebook for that defense.

Edition details

• Publisher: Regnery
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1596980591
• ISBN 13: 9781596980594
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 340