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Wyclif's Dust: Western cultures from the printing press to the present Hardcover – 12 July 2022
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Western societies have some problems...
... political extremism, declining trust, and behavioural issues like the opiate and mental health crises. These problems did not come from nowhere: they have roots in the dramatic cultural changes of the late twentieth century. To understand them, we must rethink our own history. The West did not just develop good institutions and economic growth: it also created a uniquely powerful culture. By reanalysing the rise of the West through a cultural prism, using ideas from the new science of cultural evolution, Wyclif’s Dust shows where modern liberalism went wrong, and how to repair it.Along the way, you’ll learn why you can tell your kids anything and be believed; which U2 song Bono described as “just a load of vowel sounds ganging up on a great man”; what the Ancient Egyptian Onomasticon of Amenope taught its readers; how the Swedes learned to read; just how drunk people were in 17th-century Shropshire; why Frederick of Prussia thought of himself as “God’s administrator”; how Charles James Fox dived into a bowl of cream; why Baron von Haynau was chased down a London high street by draymen; how many seconds it should take you to open or close a file drawer; the unprintable things the Wolf Man wanted to do to Sigmund Freud; why modern Norwegians “don’t like to get fish goo in their hair”; why social media is a BUMMER; and what happened to the unused confetti from Hilary Clinton’s election night in 2016.
Wyclif’s Dust takes you on a journey from our shared past, through our conflict-ridden present, to our future.
- Print length385 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication date12 July 2022
- Dimensions15.24 x 2.95 x 22.86 cm
- ISBN-13979-8840452974
Product details
- ASIN : B0B5PPXSQH
- Publisher : Independently published (12 July 2022)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 385 pages
- ISBN-13 : 979-8840452974
- Dimensions : 15.24 x 2.95 x 22.86 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 2,064,167 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 77,529 in Social & Cultural History
- 267,621 in Social Sciences (Books)
- Customer reviews:
About the author

David Hugh-Jones is an academic at the School of Economics in the University of East Anglia. He has published articles in political science, economics and biology. He's interested in cultural change. You can read his newsletter at https://wyclif.substack.com.
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