Professor Jack Goody builds on his own previous work to extend further his highly influential critique of what he sees as the pervasive eurocentric or occidentalist biases of so much western historical writing. Goody also examines the consequent 'theft' by the West of the achievements of other cultures in the invention of (notably) democracy, capitalism, individualism, and love. The Theft of History discusses a number of theorists in detail, including Marx, Weber and Norbert Elias, and engages with critical admiration western historians like Fernand Braudel, Moses Finlay and Perry Anderson. Major questions of method are raised, and Goody proposes a new comparative methodology for cross-cultural analysis, one that gives a much more sophisticated basis for assessing divergent historical outcomes, and replaces outmoded simple differences between East and West. The Theft of History will be read by an unusually wide audience of historians, anthropologists and social theorists.

傑剋 •古迪（Jack Goody），被譽為西方新史學的代錶之一，劍橋大學社會人類學退休教授，與柏拉特(J．M．Blaut)、貢德 •弗蘭剋、彭慕蘭等人齊名。古迪涉獵甚廣，著作頗豐，作品的主題涉及瞭人類學、曆史、社會文化研究等方麵，著作被大量引用，並被翻譯成多種語言齣版。