West

“Wood runners” is the name given to travelling fur traders in the age of pioneers. Focusing on two centuries of their risky adventures and on their relationship with Amerindian populations allows Gilles Havard to write a monumental multicultural history of the early North American West.

In Florence and Baghdad, Hans Belting writes a new history of the human gaze based on its symbolic value in relation to the image. His starting point is the cultural transfer between the East and the West, leading to the invention of perspective in the 16^th century. The author examines two different forms of cultures of the gaze and lays the groundwork for a global art history.

Why, in recent centuries, has science and technology made much greater strides in Western Europe than in the Middle East, India or China? Why, in particular, have all the scientific and industrial revolutions been kindled in the West? And how is it that, for the last two centuries, the world has revolved around those rising in the West? David Cosandey sets out a vast general theory on the conditions favouring scientific progress.