Perspective

Niall Ferguson is known as a popular historian who we might describe as a contrarian and iconoclast. Among his claims to fame are his arguments that the U.K. should not have entered World War I and that the British Empire was a force for good in the world. He is known not so much as a "right-wing" historian but as one who makes claims that often upset conventional wisdom on the left. Perhaps Ferguson's single most prominent identifying feature as a popular historian is his insistence that the West has a great deal to be proud of, in contrast to a large wave of historians that focus on the moral and economic weaknesses of the West.

Civilization fits into Ferguson's general perspective. In it, he claims that a great many in the West have lost moral and philosophical confidence in their civilization, which Ferguson believes is inherently...