Volume 21, Number 8 · May 16, 1974
Where We Started
By J.H. Elliott
The Shape of European History
by William H. McNeill
Oxford University Press, 200 pp., $7.50
Venice: The Hinge of Europe, 1081-1797
by William H. McNeill
University of Chicago Press, 334 pp., $10.75
Venice, a Maritime Republic
by Frederic C. Lane
Johns Hopkins University Press, 505 pp., $6.95 (paper)
Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527-1800
by Eric Cochrane
University of Chicago Press, 593 pp., $12.50
Professor William McNeill of the University of Chicago is nothing if not bold. Already well known as the author of that remarkable excursion into global history, The Rise of the West, he has now published in quick succession a book-size 'essay' covering seven centuries of Venetian history, and an essay-size essay covering rather more than twenty centuries of European history. Although one discusses a city and the other a continent, the two essays are in fact closely related. For each illustrates what appears to be the central theme of Professor McNeill's world view—the role of cultural encounters as catalysts of change.
Review, 2402 words
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