World History: Journeys from Past to Present uses common themes to present an integrated and comprehensive survey of human history from its origins to the present day. By weaving together thematic and regional perspectives in coherent chronological narratives, Goucher and Walton transform the overwhelming sweep of the human past into a truly global story that is relevant to the contemporary issues of our time. Revised and updated throughout, the second edition of this innovative textbook combines clear chronological progression with thematically focused chapters divided into six parts as follows: PART 1. EMERGENCE (Human origins to 500 CE) PART 2. ORDER (1 CE-1500 CE) PART 3. CONNECTIONS (500-1600 CE) PART 4. BRIDGING WORLDS (1300-1800 CE) PART 5. TRANSFORMING LIVES (1500-1900) PART 6. FORGING A GLOBAL COMMUNITY (1800- Present) The expanded new edition features an impressive full-color design with a host of illustrations, maps and primary source excerpts integrated throughout. Chapter opening timelines supply context for the material ahead, while end of chapter questions and annotated additional resources provide students with the tools for independent study. Each chapter and part boasts introductory and summary essays that guide the reader in comprehending the relevant theme. In addition, the companion website offers a range of resources including an interactive historical timeline, an indispensable study skills section for students, tips for teaching and learning thematically, and PowerPoint slides, lecture material and discussion questions in a password protected area for instructors. This textbook provides a basic introduction for all students of World History, incorporating thematic perspectives that encourage critical thinking, link to globally relevant contemporary issues, and stimulate further study.

The Human Journey offers a truly concise yet satisfyingly full history of the world from ancient times to the present. Its themes include not only the great questions of the humanities—nature versus nurture, the history and meaning of human variation, the sources of wealth, and causes of revolution—but also the major transformations in human history: agriculture, cities, iron, writing, universal religions, global trade, industrialization, popular government, justice, and equality. Beginning with our most important questions and searching all of our past for answers, this is world history in a grand humanistic tradition.

Using a thematic approach, this innovative textbook explores the history of the world, from its earliest prehistory to the present age of globalization.

World History: An Introduction provides readers with the knowledge and tools necessary to understand the global historical perspective and how it can be used to shed light on both our past and our present. A concise and original guide to the concepts, methods, debates and contents of world history, it combines a thematic approach with a clear and ambitious focus. Each chapter traces connections with the past and the present to explore major questions in world history: How did humans evolve from an endangered species to the most successful of them all? How has nature shaped human history? How did agricultural societies push human history in a new direction? How has humankind organized itself in ever more complex administrative systems? How have we developed new religious and cultural patterns? How have the paths of ‘The West’ and ‘The Rest’ diverged over the last five centuries? How, at the same time, has the world become more interconnected and "globalized"? How is this world characterized by growing gaps in wealth, poverty and inequality? Sharp and accessible, Eric Vanhaute’s introduction to this exciting field demonstrates that world history is more of a perspective than a single all-encompassing narrative: an instructive new way of seeing, thinking and doing. It is an essential resource for students of history in a global context.

This book makes a unique and timely contribution to world/global historical studies and related fields. It places essential world historical frameworks by top scholars in the field today in clear, direct relation to and conversation with one other, offering them opportunity to enrich, elucidate and, at times, challenge one another. It thereby aims to: (1) offer world historians opportunity to critically reflect upon and refine their essential interpretational frameworks, (2) facilitate more effective and nuanced teaching and learning in and beyond the classroom, (3) provide accessible world historical contexts for specialized areas of historical as well as other fields of research in the humanities, social sciences and sciences, and (4) promote comparative historiographical critique which (a) helps identify continuing research questions for the field of world history in particular, as well as (b) further global peace and dialogue in relation to varying views of our ever-increasingly interconnected, interdependent, multicultural, and globalized world and its shared though diverse and sometimes contested history.

The New World History is a comprehensive volume of essays selected to enrich world history teaching and scholarship in this rapidly expanding field. The forty-four articles in this book take stock of the history, evolving literature, and current trajectories of new world history. These essays, together with the editorsÕ introductions to thematic chapters, encourage educators and students to reflect critically on the development of the field and to explore concepts, approaches, and insights valuable to their own work. The selections are organized in ten chapters that survey the history of the movement, the seminal ideas of founding thinkers and todayÕs practitioners, changing concepts of world historical space and time, comparative methods, environmental history, the Òbig historyÓ movement, globalization, debates over the meaning of Western power, and ongoing questions about the intellectual premises and assumptions that have shaped the field.

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.