The Essential World History: v. 1 [平装]

In this best-selling text, noted teachers and scholars William J. Duiker and Jackson J. Spielvogel present a brief, balanced, highly-readable overview of world history that explores common challenges and experiences that unite the human past and that identify key global patterns over time. Thorough coverage of political, economic, social, religious, intellectual, cultural, and military history has been integrated into a chronologically ordered synthesis to help students gain an appreciation and understanding of the distinctive character and development of individual cultures in society. The Fourth Edition continues to take a global approach to world history, with an emphasis on analytical comparisons between and among cultures throughout history. This approach helps students to link events together in a broad comparative and global framework, thereby placing the contemporary world in a more meaningful historical context. It is available as: "The Essential World History, Fourth Edition" (Chapters 1-30), ISBN: 0495902942; "Volume I: To 1800" (Chapters 1-18), ISBN: 0495902950; and, "Volume II: Since 1500" (Chapters 14-30), ISBN: 0495902969.

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.