Sources for Cultures of the West Volume 2: Since 1350

Designed to accompany Cultures of the West, Second Edition, by Clifford R. Backman (OUP, 2015), the two-volume Sources for Cultures of the West, Second Edition, features approximately six written sources per chapter that highlight key themes in the study of Western civilization. Each of the 175 sources is accompanied by a headnote. Each volume begins with a special unit, "How to Read a Primary Source," that provides students with important advice on how to work with textual documents in studying the past. This second edition features forty-one new sources and offers increased coverage of Islam, Judaism, and women's history.

Clifford R. Backman has been a member of the History Department at Boston University since 1989. He is currently at work on a book that traces the development of toleration and interpersonal forgiveness in medieval Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

How to Read a Primary Source

Chapter 12. Renaissance and Reformations
12.1 Petrarca, "Letter to Posterity"
12.2 From Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (Mad Orlando), published 1516
12.3 Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, ca. 1517?
12.4 Erasmus, "Letter to a Friend," "Julius Excluded from Heaven,"
and Introduction to the Gospels, first published 1522
12.5 Martin Luther, "Preface to the New Testament," first published 1522
12.6 Francesco Guicciardini, Florence under Lorenzo de' Medici
12.7 Cellini, My Life, 1558-1563
12.8 Vasari, Lives of Artists, first published in 1550, revised and added to until 1568

Chapter 13. Worlds Old and New
13.1 Bartolomé de las Casas, A Short Account, written 1542; published 1552
13.2 Galileo Galilei, Letter to Don Benedetto Castelli, December 21, 1613
13.3 John Donne, Sermon, (December 12, 1626); "To His Mistress Going to Bed" (1633)
13.4 Descartes, A Discourse on the Method, 1637
13.5 The Jesuit Relations, French North America, 1649
13.6 Thomas Hobbes, "On Natural Law," Leviathan, 1651

Chapter 14. The War of All Against All
14.1 John Foxe, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Trial of Anne Askew
14.2 Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, "The Court of Suleiman the Magnificent", 1581
14.3 From Christopher Marlowe, The Massacre at Paris, ca. 1593
14.4 Johannes Junius, Letter to His Daughter and Trial Transcript, 1628

Chapter 15. From Westphalia to Paris: Regimes Old and New
15.1 Anne of France, Lessons for My Daughter, (end 16th century)
15.2 Molière, The Misanthrope, first performed 1666
15.3 Cardinal Richelieu, "The Role of the King," Political Testament, ca. 1638, first published 1688
15.4 Jean Domat, Civil Laws According to the Natural Order, 1697
15.5 François Fénelon, The Adventures of Telemachus, 1699

Chapter 16. The Enlightened
16.1 John Locke, "Of Tyranny," Two Treatises of Government, 1689
16.2a Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year, 1722
16.3a. Rousseau, "A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality," 1755
16.3b. Voltaire, Letter to Rousseau on the Latter's "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality," 1755
16.4. Cesare Beccaria, "On Torture," Of Crimes and Punishments, 1764
16.5. Adam Smith, "Of the Principle of the Commercial or Mercantile System," Wealth of Nations, 1776

Chapter 17. The French Revolution and Napoleon
17.1 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790
17.2 Maximilien Robespierre, Report of the Principles of Public Morality (1794)
17.3 Napoleon, Letter to his Brother Jerome, November 15, 1807
17.4 Jakob Walter, Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier, written 1856, first published 1932
Chapter18. Industrialization and Its Discontents
18.1 William Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey," 1798; "The World Is too Much with Us," 1806
18.2 Letter of Bettina von Arnim to Johann Goethe, 1810
18.3 Thomas Carlyle, "Signs of the Times," 1829
18.4 Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, 1851

Chapter 19. The Birth of Modern Politics
19.1. Lajos Kossuth's Speech of the 11th July, 1848
19.2. Karl Marx, "First Premises of the Materialist Method," The German Ideology, 1846, first published 1932
19.3. Johann Georg Eccarius, from "The Friend of the People" (No. 4, January 4, 1851)
19.4. Caroline Norton, "On the Infant Custody Bill," 1839; "On Divorce," 1855
19.5. Isabella Beeton, From Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, 1861

Chapter 20. Nationalism and Identity
20.1 Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, An Imam in Paris: Account of a Stay in Paris by an Egyptian Cleric, 1826-1831
20.2 Charles Trevelyan, The Irish Crisis, 1848
20.3 Matthew Arnold, Preamble; "On a Definition of Culture," Culture and Anarchy, 1867
20.4 Edward Augustus Freeman, Race and Language, 1879
20.5 Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner, Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, 1888
20.6 Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, 1895

Chapter 21. The Modern Woman
21.1 Mary Wollstonecraft, "Dedication to Talleyrand," Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792
21.2 Caroline Norton, English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century, 1854
21.3 Winnifred Cooley, "The Bachelor Maiden," The New Womanhood, 1904
21.4 Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education (1912).

Chapter 22. The Challenge of Secularism
22.1. Charles Lyell, from "On Extinct Quadrupeds," Principles of Geology, 1830-1833
22.2. Abraham Geiger, "Moral and Legal Rules," Judaism and Islam, 1833
22.3. Ernst Renan, "Miracles"
22.4 Charles Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life," 1863
22.5. Charles Darwin, "On Sociability," The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871
22.6. Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature (A rebours), 1884
22.7. Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man under Socialism," 1891
22.8. Wassily Kandinsky, on the Spiritual Element in Art, 1912
22.9. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 1929

Chapter 23. The Great Land Grab
23.1. Winston Churchill, "The Battle of Omdurman," The River War, 1899
23.2. John A. Hobson, "Criticism of Imperialism," Imperialism, 1902?
23.3. Mark Twain, "King Leopold's Soliloquy," 1905
23.4. Mohandas Gandhi, Indian Home Rule
23.5. Frederick Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911)
23.6. Presidential Address of Chitta Ranjan Das, Indian National Congress at Gaya, December 1922

Chapter 24. The World at War (Part I)
24.1. Rudyard Kipling, France at War (1915)
24.2. Extracts from the Treaty of Versailles, 1919
24.3 Ernst Junger, Storm of Steel, 1920
24.4 Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1929
24.5 Norman Angell, The Great Illusion, 1933

Chapter 25. Radical Realignments
25.1. Harry Sacher, "A Jewish Palestine" (1917)
25.2. John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919
25.3. Paul Valéry, A Crisis of the Mind, 1919
25.4. Henry Ford, The International Jew, 1920
25.5. Excerpts from a speech delivered by Adolf Hitler to open the 1933 Congress of the National Socialist Party
25.6. Mussolini, "Force and Consent" (1923)
25.7. Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), The Decline of the West
25.8. Friedrich Hayek, "Economic Control and Totalitarianism," 1944

Chapter 26. The World at War (Part II)
26.1. Aldous Huxley, An Encyclopaedia of Pacifism, 1937
26.2. Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas, 1938
26.3. Adolf Hitler, Speech from September 19, 1939.
26.4. Gustave Gilbert, Nuremburg Diary, 1947
26.5. Arthur Koestler, The God That Failed, 1949
Chapter 27. Theater of the Absurd: The Postwar World
27.1. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942
27.2. Nikolai Novikov, On Post-War American Policy, 1946
27.3. Winston Churchill, "Iron Curtain" Speech, March 5, 1947
27.4. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights December 10, 1948
27.5. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex¸ 1949
27.6. Abba Eban, The Arab Refugee Problem, 1958

Chapter 28. Something to Believe In
28.1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sermon of January 21, 1934
28.2 Paul Tillich, Collective Guilt¸ 1943
28.3 Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, 1963
28.4 NSC 68: April 14, 1950
28.5. Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, 1968
28.6. Gamal Abdel Nasser, Resignation Speech, 1967
28.7. Enoch Powell, "Rivers of Blood" Speech, 1968
28.8. Ayatollah Khomeini, Message, 1980
28.9. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, On Nuclear Defense, 1980s

Chapter 29. Global Warmings
29.1. Halidé Edib Adivar, Memoirs, 1926 and 1928
29.2. Fatima Mernissi, "The Story of a Female Psychic," 1989
29.3. Francis Fukuyama, "Our Pessimism," 1992
29.4. Luce Irigaray, From An Ethics of Sexual Difference, 1993
29.5. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, 1996
29.6. Richard Rorty, Failed Prophecies, Glorious Hopes, 1998
29.7. George W. Bush, Speech to Congress, September 20, 2001
29.8. Mohammed Arkoun, "In Praise of Subversive Reason: Beyond Dialogue and the Quest for Identity"
29.9. World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report, 2010