Time and Time Again

There is a very inherent Eurocentrism to this book that the author doesn't seem to even want to hide. At first I thought it was just McClusky being a “bad” character with her off-putting black and white views on history, but I DNFed a little over halfway through the book and I still never got the feeling that McClusky was really meant to be that severely censured.

“Let's face it, for better or worse the last half dozen centuries on earth have been shaped by what we like to call Western civilization. ... When did Europe lose its way? When did its worst ideals triumph over its best? ... When, in short, did the most influential continent on the planet wilfully and without duress screw up on a scale unequalled in all history and in one insane moment go from hero to zero, from top dog to underdog?”“The insane, perverse, wilful self-desutrction of a collective culture that had been four thousand years in the making, smashed utterly almost overnight. Never to rise again, and giving way in its stead to a genocidal global hotchpotch of half-baked fanaticism from both left and right.”“Prior to that point the world was an increasingly peaceful place in which science and society were developing towards the common good.”“You might feel differently about that if you were a Native American, or an indigenous Australian. Or an African in the Belgian Congo-““Oh come ON, Hugh! I'm not saying anything was or ever could be remotely perfect. [...] Men will always take what isn't theirs, the strong will always exploit the weak - no amount of historical tinkering could ever stop that.”“Just try to imagine what the world would be like now if it had never happened - if the great nations of Europe had continued on their journey to peace, prosperity and enlightenment; if those millions of Europe's best and finest young men, the most highly educated and civilized generation the world had ever known, had not died in the mud but had instead survived to shape the twentieth century.” Stanton could see her point. [...] “You're right. Can't fault your argument. 1914 was the year of true catastrophe.”

Stanton gaping at how much pubic hair women actually had...