Sources of the West is a collection of excerpts from primary source documents designed to supplement textbooks and lectures in the teaching of Western Civilization. These documents are the source material historians use to construct their accounts and interpretations of history. As they examine these source materials, students learn to think historically - to examine the ideas of others, to understand past experiences on others' terms, to recognize other points of view.

"Designed to accompany The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, Fourth Edition, and The Making of the West: A Concise History, Fourth Edition"--Pref.

Praised by instructors and students alike for its readability and attention to everyday life, the thirteenth edition of A History of Western Society includes a greater variety of tools to engage todays students and save instructors time. This edition features an enhanced primary source program, a question-driven narrative, five chapters devoted to the lives of ordinary people that make the past real and relevant, and the best and latest scholarship throughout. Available for free when packaged with the print book, the popular digital assignment options for this text bring skill building and assessment to a highly effective level. The active learning options come in LaunchPad , which combines an accessible e-book with LearningCurve, an adaptive and automatically graded learning tool that—when assigned—helps ensure students read the book; the complete companion reader with quizzes on each source; and many other study and assessment tools. For instructors who want the easiest and most affordable way to ensure students come to class prepared, Achieve Read & Practice pairs LearningCurve adaptive quizzing and our mobile, accessible Value Edition e-book, in one easy-to-use product.

From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.

Encouraging a broad understanding of continuity, change, and innovation in human history, Patterns in World History presents the global past in a comprehensive, even-handed, and open-ended fashion. Instead of focusing on the memorization of people, places, and events, this text strives topresent important facts in context and draw meaningful connections by examining patterns that have emerged throughout global history.

This brief version of WESTERN CIVILIZATION retains all of the best-selling features of the larger book in a condensed format. Three versions are available: Comprehensive (Chapters 1-29), Volume I: To 1715, and Volume II: Since 1500. The author writes, "I began this project with two primary goals. First, I wanted to write a well-balanced work in which the political, economic, social, religious, intellectual, cultural, and military aspects of Western civilization would be integrated into a chronologically ordered synthesis. Second, I wanted to avoid the approach that is quite common in other brief histories of Western civilization - an approach that makes them collections of facts with little continuity from section to section. Instead, I sought to keep the story in history. Narrative history effectively transmits the knowledge of the past and is the form that best enables students to remember and understand the past. At the same time, I have not overlooked the need for the kind of historical analysis that makes students aware that historians often disagree in their interpretations of the past."

Volume II: from 1600 to the Present.