Ed West has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 7 ratings. The most-rated is Iron, Fire and Ice.
Iron, Fire and Ice
Summary
Have you read everything George R.R. Martin has every written? Do you know what in Game of Thrones is based in real history? A young pretender raises an army to take the throne. Learning of his father’s death, the adolescent, dashing and charismatic and descended from the old kings of the North, vows to avenge him. He is supported in this war by his mother, who has spirited away her two younger sons to safety. Against them is the queen, passionate, proud, and strong-willed and with more of the masculine virtues of the time than most men. She too is battling for the inheritance of her young son, not yet fully grown but already a sadist who takes delight in watching executions. Sound familiar? It may read like the plot of Game of Thrones. Yet that was also the story of the bloodiest battle in British history, fought at the culmination of the War of the Roses. George RR Martin’s bestselling novels are rife with allusions, inspirations, and flat-out copies of real-life people, events, and places of medieval and Tudor England and Europe. The Red Wedding? Based on actual events in Scottish history. The poisoning of Joffrey Baratheon? Eerily similar to the death of William the Conqueror’s grandson. The Dothraki? Also known as Huns, Magyars, Turks, and Mongols. Join Ed West, as he explores all of Martin’s influences, from religion to war to powerful women. Discover the real history behind the phenomenon and see for yourself that truth is stranger than fiction.
©2019 by Ed West. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Silence of Our Friends
Summary
Over the summer of 2013 Egypt witnessed its worst anti-Christian violence in centuries, with dozens of churches burned down by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. In Syria Islamist gunmen occupy the faith’s holiest site, while the Civil War has given Sunni extremists the chance to empty Christian villages through ‘religious cleansing’. And 10 years after the fall of Saddam, Iraq’s pre-war Christian population has fallen from a million to 200,000 and now barely clings on. Yet this greatest and most tragic of historical events of the 21st century has been met with near apathy in the West. In The Silence of Our Friends: The Extinction of Christianity in the Middle East, Spectator blogger and Catholic Herald deputy editor Ed West looks at the tragedy that has befallen Christian communities in the region where the faith first took hold, and asks whether there is anything the west can do, or if it will soon be the last Christmas in the land of St Paul.
©2014 Ed West (P)2014 Audible Studios
Asabiyyah
Summary
A quarter of a century after the end of Communism swept away the ideological conflict of the "short 20th century", a new world is once again taking shape, this time in the Middle East. But what does the crisis in the region, and its refugee exodus into Europe, signify for the future of the world? And why has the noble dream of nation-building failed? Focusing mainly on religion, ideology or economics, most analysis ignored one crucial factor: asabiyyah, or group feeling, something outlined six and a half centuries ago by a largely ignored Arab historian called Ibn Khaldun. Ibn Khaldun is largely overlooked in the west, yet, on top of his claim to being one of the greatest historians of all time, can rightfully be viewed as the father of social science and sociology. His book, The Muqaddimah, dealt with a range of subjects from science to economics to the rise and fall of empires, which he attributed to "the asabiyyah cycle" - the evolution of societies from barbarism to civilization to decadence, which he attributed to the strength of "group feeling". Even today asabiyyah is an essential component of human society and development, and is the key to understanding why some states fail and others succeed, why democracy works sometimes but often not, and why the nation-state will remain the foundation of human society. Whatever happens from now on, the outcome of the 21st century will be dependent on asabiyyah, which remains the fundamental reality of human existence.
©2015 Ed West (P)2016 Audible, Inc.