A World View

During the last decade of his life, the world historian William H. McNeill (1917-2016), winner of the National Book Award for The Rise of the West, the National Humanities Medal, and the Erasmus Prize, wrote a series of essays, and accounts of his experiences with other prominent 20th-century figures: Mortimer Adler, Henry Moore, and Carl Sagan, who asked McNeill to join a project looking for extraterrestrial intelligence. In all these pieces, McNeill tested ideas and made new...
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During the last decade of his life, the world historian William H. McNeill (1917-2016), winner of the National Book Award for The Rise of the West, the National Humanities Medal, and the Erasmus Prize, wrote a series of essays, and accounts of his experiences with other prominent 20th-century figures: Mortimer Adler, Henry Moore, and Carl Sagan, who asked McNeill to join a project looking for extraterrestrial intelligence. In all these pieces, McNeill tested ideas and made new connections, drawing on many years of reflection on human affairs. They are published here, together with his last speech, "Leaving Western Civ Behind," and a lengthy cover essay from Foreign Affairs, these explorations will give pleasure to readers who already know The Rise of the West, A World History, and Plagues and Peoples. They will also introduce to new readers to a writer who remained curious, perceptive, and innovative to the end of his life, which lasted nearly a century. McNeill editor in chief of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History, which in 2024, eight years after his death, was published in Chinese by Sanlian Press, taking his work to a new audience of many millions.