Among both academic and mainstream critics, there were positive reviews of Why The West Rules—For Now, lauding the book for the scope of its analysis while still being written in an accessible way. Adal Manai praised it as giving “an egalitarian view of human history, written in a witty and provocative way” (Manai, Adal. “Why the West Rules For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future, by Ian Morris” The Canadian Journal of History, vol. 47, no. 1, 2012, pp. 191-92). In another review, Niall Ferguson described Morris as writing in a way that could be appreciated even by general readers, and having “such a profound understanding of the ways that culture, technology, and geography interact over the very long run” (Ferguson, Niall. “Why the West Rules For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future” Foreign Affairs, vol. 89, no. 6, 2010, pp.197-98).

However, the book also generated some criticism and controversy. Much of the criticism concerns Morris’s geographical determinism, a term referring to Morris’s belief that geography and environment are the dominant drivers of history while culture and human agency are unimportant. While calling the book “brilliant”, Sverre Håkon Bagge critiqued Morris for viewing intellectual and cultural forces as just a product of material conditions, arguing instead that “intellectual traditions to some extent have a life of their own and take time to change” (Bagge, Sverre Håkon. “History, Archaeology and Cultural Comparison.” European Review, vol. 28, no. 3, 2020, pp. 465-68). Similarly, George Walden writes that “mindsets can have no place in Morris’s materialistic universe” and accuses Morris of having a “bleakly deterministic interpretation of our lives” (Walden, George. “Why the West Rules—For Now—Review” The Guardian, 29 Jan. 2011). These criticisms suggest that Morris’s focus on geography, while illuminating in some respects, might be too reductive or overly simplistic in others.