Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Western Heritage

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Non-admin closure. Jujutacular ^T · C 00:53, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Western Heritage[edit]

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Does not meet the notability requirements of ~~WP:BOOK~~ WP:BK. These guidelines require that before a book can be considdered notable, it must meet at least one of the following criteria:

1. The book has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the book itself...

2. The book has won a major literary award.

3. The book has been considered by reliable sources to have made a significant contribution to a notable motion picture, or other art form, or event or political or religious movement.

4. The book is the subject of instruction at multiple grade schools, high schools, universities or post-graduate programs in any particular country; OR

5. The book's author is so historically significant that any of his or her written works may be considered notable.

The guidelines specifically exclude textbooks from point 4, above - in other words, the book must be the source of study itself and not a study guide. If this is to be included as a stand-alone article, it needs sources to demonstrate notability - in short, other people need to be talking (and writing) about this book. Wikipeterproject (talk) 22:31, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Does not meet requirements of WP:BOOK —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yutsi (talk • contribs) 22:32, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The book meets notability criteria 4 of WP:Book. William A. Percy and Pedro J. Suarez in their August 1984 article "Today's Western and World Civilization College Texts: A Review" The History Teacher 17(4): pp. 567-590, concede that the histories aimed at college freshmen are rarely reviewed. So they reviewed the top sellers. About the second (1983) edition of The Western Heritage they said (pages 580-581):

In many ways, The Western Heritage (Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, and Frank M. Turner, 1979, 2nd, 1983, pp. 1,078, Macmillan) is the most curious. Long and difficult from the beginning and expanded by almost 100 pages in the new edition, it might almost be described as reactionary because although among the most recent works, it is the most old-fashioned, still dwelling on Athenian politics and expounding the intricacies of Zwinglian theology. The scholarship is entirely up to date and, as far as intellectual history goes, remarkably error free, though Henry Plantagenet inherited Normandy, not Burgundy (p. 321), and there are other weaknesses in the medieval sections. The prose, readable if complex, is not as clear as Brinton's nor is the narrative as lively. Worse, there is no clear theme about which the oppressive number of seemingly random facts can be coherently grouped, for example, the string of biographies of sixteenth and seventeenth century scientists and philosophers (Chapter Seventeen) from Copernicus to Locke, all duly listed in chronological sequence without any analysis or other rational connection.

The coverage and viewpoint is questionable. By assigning eight of thirty-four chapters to ancient Greece and Rome, the authors almost omit Byzantines and Ottomans. Politically conservative, they treat the nations beyond the West, even Russia and Poland, disdainfully, relegating them to the margin. We advise against adopting for classes with significant minorities or even "ethnics." One wonders how this book sensitizes Wasps to other cultures and the historical experiences of their contemporaries. There is not a single chapter after the brief treatment of early Islam devoted to cultures outside Europe (not even one on its colonies). Some of the errors in economics and other social sciences might be attributable to the author's parroting of other texts.?1 Heritage has too many pictures and the maps, like Brinton's, contain enough places to confound students. Most crucially, only a few of the maps or pictures relate in any but a superficial way to the text they are supposed to illuminate. The chronological aids, sizeable excerpts from sources, and even the perfunctiorily annotated bibliography enhance the text.

The Western Heritage has been around since 1979 and is still used. This book was definitely the subject of instruction at multiple coleges and universities. If you are going to regard a history text as a mere study guide and thus exclude it from criteria (4), it still qualifies under criteria (1), see the footnotes. --Bejnar (talk) 01:25, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep* Meets criteria 1 in the list given at the begining. (Per Benjar) Also the link at the top should be to the Books Notability page and not to the Books page.Amentet (talk) 02:43, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Textbooks are really an entirely different world from trade books, and I think that broader evidence of notability than the obligatory reviews in educational journals would be needed to demonstrate that one satisfies WP:BK. (One that would qualify, I think, is H. W. Janson's History of Art, and we don't appear to have an article even about that.) Cases like this seem to be exactly the reason why the exception noted by the nominator appears in the guideline. Deor (talk) 15:08, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep sources are available. There are relatively few standard textbooks, and the major ones, and the controversial ones, should have articles. DGG ( talk ) 04:04, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Bejnar provided enough references that it now passes BK criteria 1. NativeForeigner ^Talk/_Contribs 06:32, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.