Synopses & Reviews
Explore common challenges and experiences that unite the human past and identify key global patterns over time with THE ESSENTIAL WORLD HISTORY, 6e. This brief overview of world history covers political, economic, social, religious, intellectual, cultural, and military history integrated into a chronologically ordered synthesis to help you gain an appreciation and understanding of the distinctive character and development of individual cultures in society. You can use the book's global approach and its emphasis on analytical comparisons between cultures to link events together in a broad comparative and global framework that places the contemporary world in a more meaningful historical context.
Synopsis
THE ESSENTIAL WORLD HISTORY, 6e presents a balanced picture of world history that pays respect to the richness and diversity of the tapestry of the human experience. Based on the Sixth Edition of Duiker and Spielvogel's comprehensive WORLD HISTORY, this critically and popularly acclaimed book balances a thorough global approach with attention to the unique character and development of civilization in divergent parts of the world. The text covers individual civilizations such as China, India, and Europe, with due attention paid to the rise of the West, and provides points of comparison between and among these civilizations.
About the Author
William J. Duiker is liberal arts Professor Emeritus of East Asian studies at The Pennsylvania State University. A former U.S. diplomat with service in Taiwan, South Vietnam, and Washington, D.C., he received his doctorate in Far Eastern history from Georgetown University in 1968, where his dissertation dealt with the Chinese educator and reformer Cai Yuanpei. At Penn State, he has written extensively on the history of Vietnam and modern China, including the highly acclaimed THE COMMUNIST ROAD TO POWER IN VIETNAM (revised edition, Westview Press, 1996), which was selected for a Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award in 1982-1983 and 1996-1997. Other recent books are CHINA AND VIETNAM: THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT (Berkeley, 1987), SACRED WAR: NATIONALISM AND REVOLUTION IN A DIVIDED VIETNAM (McGraw-Hill, 1995), and HO CHI MINH (Hyperion, 2000), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2001. While his research specialization is in the field of nationalism and Asian revolutions, his intellectual interests are considerably more diverse. He has traveled widely and has taught courses on the history of communism and non-Western civilizations at Penn State, where he was awarded a Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the spring of 1996. Jackson J. Spielvogel is Associate Professor Emeritus of history at The Pennsylvania State University. He received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University, where he specialized in Reformation history under Harold J. Grimm. His articles and reviews have appeared in journals such as MOREANA; JOURNAL OF GENERAL EDUCATION; CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW; ARCHIV FÜR REFORMATIONSGESCHICHTE; and AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW. He also has contributed chapters or articles to THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF REFORMATION; THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE: A DICTIONARY HANDBOOK; SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER ANNUAL OF HOLOCAUST STUDIES; and UTOPIAN STUDIES. His work has been supported by fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation and the Foundation for Reformation Research. At Penn State, he helped inaugurate the Western civilization course, as well as a popular course on Nazi Germany. His book HITLER AND NAZI GERMANY was published in 1987 (sixth edition, 2010). He is the author of WESTERN CIVILIZATION, first published in 1991 (eighth edition, 2012) and is the co-author (with William Duiker) of WORLD HISTORY, first published in January 1994 (seventh edition, 2013). Professor Spielvogel has won five major university-wide teaching awards. During the year 1988-1989, he held the Penn State Teaching Fellowship, the university's most prestigious teaching award. In 1996, he won the Dean Arthur Ray Warnock Award for Outstanding Faculty member, and in 2000 received the Schreyer Honors College Excellence in Teaching Award.
Table of Contents
PART I: THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS AND THE RISE OF EMPIRES (PREHISTORY TO 500 C.E.). 1. The First Civilizations: The Peoples of Western Asia and Egypt. 2. Ancient India. 3. China in Antiquity. 4. The Civilization of the Greeks. 5. The First World Civilization: Rome, China, and the Emergence of the Silk Road. PART II: NEW PATTERNS OF CIVILIZATION (500-1500 C.E.). 6. The Americas. 7. Ferment in the Middle East: The Rise of Islam. 8. Early Civilizations in Africa. 9. The Expansion of Civilization in Southern Asia. 10. The Flowering of Traditional China. 11. The East Asian Rimlands: Early Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. 12. The Making of Europe. 13. The Byzantine Empire and Crisis and Recovery in the West. PART III: THE EMERGENCE OF NEW WORLD PATTERNS (1500-1800). 14. New Encounters: The Creation of a World Market. 15. Europe Transformed: Reform and State Building. 16. The Muslim Empires. 17. The East Asian World. 18. The West on the Eve of a New World Order PART IV: MODERN PATTERNS OF WORLD HISTORY (1800-1945). 19. The Beginnings of Modernization: Industrialization and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century 20. The Americas and Society and Culture in the West. 21. The High Tide of Imperialism. 22. Shadows over the Pacific: East Asia Under Challenge. 23. The Beginning of the Twentieth-Century Crisis: War and Revolution. 24. Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship: Asia, The Middle East, and Latin America. from 1919 to 1939. 25. The Crisis Deepens: World War II. PART V: TOWARD A GLOBAL CIVILIZATION? THE WORL SCIENCE 1945. 26. East and West in the Grip of the Cold War. 27. Brave New World: Communism on Trial. 28. Europe and the Western Hemisphere Since 1945. 29. Challenges of Nation Building in Africa and the Middle East. 30. Toward the Pacific Century? Epilogue: A Global Civilization.