This book offers a concise survey of Western Civilization from the Stone Age through the fall of the last Western Roman Emperor in AD 476. Each of the three sections chronicle a critical epoch in human history. Section I encompasses man's ascent from barbarism to civilization in the Ancient Near East; Section II witnesses the development of Western Civilization in Ancient Greece; and Section III catalogs the failed attempt to build the West's first "nation-state" in Ancient Rome. Human foibles are abundantly portrayed but so too is the ascent of humankind.