This collection of essays asserts the specific value of world history research and teaching, showing how the field contributes to the larger historical profession and offering concrete suggestions to develop more interaction between the academy and the public. The twelve contributors, each with their own academic areas of interest, are experienced scholars and classroom teachers. Uniting them together in this volume is their professional relationship with Jerry H. Bentley (1949–2012). This shared connection served as a catalyst to showcase Bentley’s enduring legacy: a commitment to investigating large-scale questions with detailed empirical evidence that explains the human condition—documenting both patterns of similarity and difference in ways that account for regional and temporal variations. The volume continues Bentley’s meticulous attention to world historical methods: focus on scale, cross-cultural encounter, comparison, periodization, critical geography, and interdisciplinarity. Encounters Old and New in World History responds to provocations that Jerry Bentley tendered in his scholarship and through his professional activities. Contributors interrogate the institutional settings, disciplinary proclivities, methodological choices, and diverse source bases of world history research and teaching. Several essays address the ways in which present-day concerns influence research on local and global scales. Other essays pay particular attention to the production and circulation of knowledge across regional, temporal, and class boundaries, as well as between the academy and the wider public. Claiming the centrality of globally informed and focused approaches to historical inquiry, researchers continue the conversations that Bentley carried on through his own scholarship, teaching, editing of the Journal of World History, participating in public forums, and contributing to public discussions about the place of history in understanding today’s global integration. The stakes involved in asking questions about the shared history of humankind continue to increase in the current era of intensified globalization. It is incumbent upon scholars with the skills to work across linguistic, geographic, temporal, and disciplinary boundaries to show the ways that cross-cultural encounters happened historically, and to point out how such interactions play out in the institutions, classrooms, and public debates where historical interpretations are created and shared.

For review see: J.W. Schulte Nordholt, in Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis, jrg. 107, nr. 4 (1994); p. 591-592.

Over a million students at thousands of schools have learned about world history with the best selling book for the course, Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. Using the twin themes of traditions and encounters, the text emphasizes both the distinctive patterns of historical development within individual societies and the profound results of interactions between different societies. Exploring the historical record of cross-cultural interactions and exchanges, Traditions and Encounters places the world of contemporary globalization in historical context. The book helps students understand the world’s major societies and shows how the interactions of these societies affect history throughout the world. The authors tell a coherent and digestible story of the past that is not weighed down by excessive detail, so instructors are able to incorporate additional readings. This edition provides an updated map program as well as the latest scholarship. It also moves Primary Source Investigator online, improving access for students to work with primary sources.

Over a million students at thousands of schools have learned about world history with the best selling book for the course, Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. Using the twin themes of traditions and encounters, the text emphasizes both the distinctive patterns of historical development within individual societies and the profound results of interactions between different societies. Exploring the historical record of cross-cultural interactions and exchanges, Traditions and Encounters places the world of contemporary globalization in historical context. The book helps students understand the world's major societies and shows how the interactions of these societies affect history throughout the world. The authors tell a coherent and digestible story of the past that is not weighed down by excessive detail, so instructors are able to incorporate additional readings. This edition provides an updated map program as well as the latest scholarship. It also moves Primary Source Investigator online, improving access for students to work with primary sources.

Presents interviews with 11 theorists and philosophers in an attempt to get at the heart of contemporary understandings of history. Topics covered include aesthetics, objective reality, meaning, the relation of history to its modes of presentation, and the personal and civic functions of history. Includes interviews with Peter Burke, Lionel Gossman, Hans Kellner, Jerzy Topolski, and Hayden White. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Traditions & Encounters: AP Edition has a rich history of firsts: the first world history text to take a truly global perspective on the past; the first to emphasize connections among cultures; the first to combine twin themes with a seven-part framework, making the huge story of world history more manageable to both teach and learn. With its hallmark of twin themes, Traditions & Encounters continues to tell the story of the cultures and interactions that have shaped world history, while adding redesigned maps, new primary sources, and new chapter- and part-level features that strengthen connections and prompt students to analyze the events and themes in order to build a greater understanding of the past and an appreciation of history's influence on the present. Students are no longer simply reading; they are reading, interacting, and engaging in a visual, auditory, and hands-on learning experience. - Publisher.