DYNAMICS OF WORLD HISTORY

What They're Saying...

"Christopher Dawson is one of the most important historians and cultural analysts of the twentieth century. The republication of this work is a major contribution to intellectual life."
— James Hitchcock, Professor of History, St. Louis University

"This third edition of The Dynamics of World History is a valuable and welcome resource for the renewed study of Christopher Dawson. With material drawn from his essays published over several decades, this volume is arranged to create a symmetric exploration of three distinguishable subjects: a consideration of history's relationship to all aspects of sociological study, a continuous narrative of world history itself, and a survey of ancient and modern philosophies of history. Consistently solid in information, eloquent in composition, and convincing in argument, this is a volume not prudently ignored by any serious student of sociology, history, philosophy, theology, or literature."
— Patrick Henry Reardon, Senior Editor, Touchstone

"Christopher Dawson is perhaps the most thoughtful, stimulating, and suggestive historian of the Catholic faith who in this century has devoted himself to the general history of civilization. He is more down to earth and convincing than Spengler or Toynbee.... This is a book which no thoughtful historian can safely ignore, and it is as timely as it is illuminating."
— American Historical Review

"Dynamics of World History is a splendid synthesis of Christopher Dawson's historical thought. It is a book that should be read and reread not only by all students and professors of history but also by all others who wish to obtain a deeper understanding of civilization, its dynamics, and its meaning."
— Martin R. P. McGuire

"It is difficult to think of any living writer who has made so laborious and scrupulous an attempt as Dawson to understand the widest variety of social phenomena without denaturing them in terms of something other than they are. His extraordinary range of learning is seen in two essays here on St. Augustine and Gibbon, which in their percipience and richness of reference are, I think, the best studies of their subjects in English."
— Observer (London)

"[Dawson] is familiar with anthropology, sociology, psychology, and the rest of the train of the behavioral sciences, but he manages to preserve his historian's virtue in the face of all this. He is at home with medieval intellectual history, not often a strong point with modern seekers after the whole pattern of the past.... [A]n interesting volume, which may make partial converts of some of those professional historians Mr. Toynbee likes to call "antinomians."
— Crane Brinton

"[A]n impressive display of sociological and anthropological learning.... It is regrettable that [Dawson] is not better known outside England, where his standing as an historian of culture is not seriously questioned even by critics unsympathetic to his viewpoint."
— Commentary

"Dynamics of World History is extraordinarily valuable, because it is much more than a Christopher Dawson compendium, or than an introduction to Dawson. It is a very carefully collected and edited quilt of Dawson's most important writings: a multicolored quilt, rather than a collection of disparate essays. It covers and comprises what it ought to cover and comprise; and the richness and the quality of Dawson's historical thinking will catch the eye of its readers at first sight."
— John Lukacs, author, Five Days in London, May 1940.

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