hegemony

The author examines the rise and decline of superpowers from ancient Persia to the modern United States, and focuses on the reasons for their success and the factors that caused many of them to fall.

The author argues that Western civilization rose to global dominance in the fifteenth century because of the development of such concepts as competition, modern medicine, and the work ethic, but that the rest of the world has now adopted these concepts and Western dominance is being lost.