For an undergraduate course in World History.
This text, based on the bestselling The World: A History, is presented in a highly affordable Penguin Academic format.
The World: A History interweaves two stories: the story of our interactions with nature and the story of our interactions with each other. The environment-centered story is about humans distancing themselves from the rest of nature and searching for a relationship that strikes a balance between constructive and destructive exploitation. The culture-centered story is about how human cultures have become mutually influential and yet mutually differentiating. Both stories have been going on for thousands of years.
For more than 60 years, instructors and their students have looked to Penguin trade paperbacks for state of the art scholarship, accessibility, and fair prices. Pearson Prentice Hall, Penguin's sister company, aims to meet those same expectations with textbooks in our Penguin Academics Series.
We've created the Penguin Academics Series with ease of use in mind--the books are conveniently portable and highly readable, with engaging typefaces and interior designs. Concise yet thorough in their coverage of the basics, Penguin Academics titles are ideal for use either by themselves or in combination with other books (such as Penguin Classics).
Brief Contents
Contents
Maps
Special Features
Getting the Most Out of the Maps in The World
About Felipe Fernández-Armesto
From the Author to the Reader
Introducing The World
Acknowledgments
A Note on Dates and Spelling
Part 1: Foragers and Farmers, to 5000 B.C.E.
Chapter 1: Out of the Ice: Peopling the Earth
Chapter 2: Out of the Mud: Farming and Herding after the Ice Age
Part 2: Farmers and Builders, 5000 to 500 B.C.E.
Chapter 3: The Great River Valleys: Accelerating Change and Developing States
Chapter 4: A Succession of Civilizations: Ambition and Instability
Chapter 5: Rebuilding the World: Recoveries, New Initiatives, and Their Limits
Part 3: The Axial Age, from 500 B.C.E. to 100 C.E.
Chapter 6: The Great Schools
Chapter 7: The Great Empires
Part 4: Fitful Transitions, from the Third Century to the Tenth Century
Chapter 8: Postimperial Worlds: Problems of Empires in Eurasia and Africa, ca. 200 C.E. to ca. 700 C.E.
Chapter 9: The Rise of World Religions: Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism
Chapter 10: Remaking the World: Innovation and Renewal on Environmental Frontiers in the Late First Millennium
Part 5: Contacts and Conflicts, 1000 C.E. to 1200 C.E.
Chapter 11: Contending with Isolation: ca. 1000–1200
Chapter 12: The Nomadic Frontiers: The Islamic World, Byzantium, and China ca. 1000–1200
Part 6: The Crucible: The Eurasian Crises of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
Chapter 13: The World the Mongols Made
Chapter 14: The Revenge of Nature: Plague, Cold, and the Limits of Disaster in the Fourteenth Century
Chapter 15: Expanding Worlds: Recovery in the Late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Part 7: Convergence and Divergence, to ca. 1700
Chapter 16: Imperial Arenas: New Empires in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Chapter 17: The Ecological Revolution of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Chapter 18: Mental Revolutions: Religion and Science in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Chapter 19: States and Societies: Political and Social Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Part 8: Global Enlightenments, 1700–1800
Chapter 20: Driven by Growth: The Global Economy in the Eighteenth Century
Chapter 21: The Age of Global Interaction: Expansion and Intersection of Eighteenth-Century Empires
Chapter 22:The Exchange of Enlightenments: Eighteenth-Century Thought
Part 9: The Frustrations of Progress, to ca. 1900
Chapter 23: Replacing Muscle: The Energy Revolutions
Chapter 24: The Social Mold: Work and Society in the Nineteenth Century
Chapter 25: Western Dominance in the Nineteenth Century: The Westward Shift of Power and the Rise of Global Empires
Chapter 26: The Changing State: Political Developments in the Nineteenth Century
Part 10: Chaos and Complexity: The World in the Twentieth Century
Chapter 27: The Twentieth-Century Mind: Western Science and the World
Chapter 28: World Order and Disorder: Global Politics in the Twentieth
Chapter 29: The Pursuit of Utopia: Civil Society in the Twentieth Century
Chapter 30: The Embattled Biosphere: The Twentieth-Century Environment
Glossary
Credits
Notes
Index
Consistently follows a global approach throughout
Engages students in history
Pedagogical Program
The pedagogical program for the Penguin Academic Edition of The World: A History has been carefully devised to complement the narrative, reinforce important concepts, and prompt students to ask questions and formulate arguments:
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Focus Questions open each chapter and encourage students to think critically about the key issues raised in each chapter.
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Maps employ innovative perspectives to help the reader see world history in a fresh and dynamic way. A range of different maps connect with the discussion on a variety of different levels.
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Making Connections tables throughout the text help students see the global linkages behind important historical developments. Praised by users of The World, every chapter in the Penguin Academics edition of The World includes a Making Connections table.
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Review questions close each chapter under the heading "Problems and Parallels," enabling students to contextualize what they have just read in a meaningful way.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto holds the William P. Reynolds Chair of History at the University of Notre Dame. He has master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Oxford, where he spent most of his teaching career, before taking up the Chair of Global Environmental History at Queen Mary College, University of London, in 2000, and the Prince of Asturias Chair at Tufts University (2005—2009).He is on the editorial boards of the History of Cartography for the University of Chicago Press, Studies in Overseas History (Leiden University), Comparative Studies in Society and History, Journeys, and Journal of Global History. Recent awards include the World History Association Book Prize (2007), Spain’s Premio Nacional de Gastronomía(2005, for his work on the history of food), and the PremioNacional de Investigación (Sociedad Geográfica Española,2004). He has had many distinguished visiting appointments, including a Fellowship of the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences and aUnion Pacific Visiting Professorship at the University of Minnesota. He won the Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum in 1995 and the John Carter Brown Medal in 1999 and has honorary doctorates from La Trobe University and the Universidad de los Andes. He has served on the Council of the Hakluyt Society, on the Committee of English PEN, and as Chairman of the PEN Literary Foundation.
His work in journalism includes regular columns in the British and Spanish press, and, among his many contributions
to broadcasting, he is the longest-serving presenter of BBC radio’s flagship current affairs program, Analysis. He has
been short-listed for the most valuable literary prize in the United Kingdom.