ABOUT THE MAKING OF THE WEST, FIFTH EDITION

Preface: Why This Book This Way

WE ARE DELIGHTED TO PRESENT the fifth edition of The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures. With this edition, The Making of the West moves fully into the digital age, and we are proud and excited to offer a whole new way of teaching and learning western civilization. At the same time, we have stayed true to the fundamental approach that has made this book a popular choice for instructors and students alike. We continue to link the history of the West to wider developments in the world. We continue to offer a synthetic approach to history—from military to gender—that integrates different approaches rather than privileging one or two. And we continue to believe that students benefit from a solid chronological framework when they are trying to understand events of the past. This new edition is priced affordably, to save your students money and keep your overall course budget manageable. If you have been a user of the comprehensive edition of The Making of the West, you will find the complete feature program available in LaunchPad, as described below. If you were previously a user of the concise edition, you and your students also have access to the full feature program in LaunchPad. In addition to the features, LaunchPad is loaded with the full-color e-book plus LearningCurve, an adaptive learning tool; the popular Sources of the Making of the West documents collection; additional primary sources; a wealth of assessment tools; chapter summative quizzes; and more.

A Book for the Digital Age

Because we know that the classroom and the world are changing rapidly, we are excited to offer The Making of the West along with a full feature program in Bedford’s learning platform, known as LaunchPad, an intuitive new interactive e-book and course space. LaunchPad is ready to use as is, or can be edited and customized with your own material, and assigned right away.

Developed with extensive feedback from history instructors and students, LaunchPad includes the complete narrative of the print book, the companion reader Sources of the Making of the West, by Katharine Lualdi, LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, and a full suite of skill-building features, all of which will be familiar to users of the comprehensive edition of The Making of the West and are now made available for the first time to users of the concise edition

The adaptive learning tool known as LearningCurve is designed to get students to read before they come to class. With LearningCurve students move through questions based on the narrative text at their own pace and accumulate points as they go in a game-like fashion. Feedback for incorrect responses explains why the answer is incorrect and directs students back to the text to review. The end result is a better understanding of the key elements of the text.

The LaunchPad e-book features five unique skill-building features. Four of these features appear in every chapter in LaunchPad. They extend the narrative by revealing the process of interpretation, providing a solid introduction to historical argument and critical thinking, and capturing the excitement of historical investigation.

Primary Sources—at least two per chapter—give students a more direct experience of the past through original voices. Whether it is Frederick Barbaraossa replying to the Romans when they offer him the emperor’s crown, Marie de Sévigne’s description of the French court, or an ordinary person’s account of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, primary documents offer a window into the thoughts and actions of the past. Each document is accompanied by a short, auto-graded multiple-choice quiz.
Contrasting Views compares two or more often conflicting primary sources focused on a central event, person, or development—such as Roman attitudes toward Cleopatra, the Mongols, the consumer revolution of the eighteenth century, and decolonization in Africa—enabling students to understand history from a variety of contemporaneous perspectives. Each feature contains analytical questions along with an auto-graded multiple-choice quiz.
Seeing History guides students through the process of reading images as historical evidence. Each one provides either a single image or paired images for comparison and contrast, with background information, and questions that encourage visual analysis. It also has an auto-graded multiple-choice quiz.
Taking Measure introduces students to quantitative analysis in every chapter. Each highlights a chart, table, graph, or map of historical statistics that illuminates an important political, social, or cultural development. Topics include the distances covered by Alexander the Great’s army, the expansion of the printing press to 1500, and wartime production of the major powers during the Second World War. Each comes with a question for analysis and an auto-graded multiple-choice quiz.
Terms of History appears in 11 of the chapters and looks not only at the origin of a term—such as civilization, renaissance, progress, and globalization—but also at the changing meaning of the term over time, which further underscores historical skill building. The feature comes with an auto-graded multiple-choice quiz.

About The Making of the West

Even with all the exciting digital changes, our primary goal remains the same: to demonstrate that the history of the West is the story of an ongoing process, not a finished result with one fixed meaning. No one Western people or culture has existed from the beginning until now. Instead, the history of the West includes many different peoples and cultures. To convey these ideas, we have written a sustained story of the West’s development in a broad, global context that reveals the cross-cultural interactions fundamental to the shaping of Western politics, societies, cultures, and economies. Indeed, the first chapter opens with a section on the origins and contested meaning of the term Western civilization.

Chronological Framework

We know from our own teaching that introductory students need a solid chronological framework, one with enough familiar benchmarks to make the material easy to grasp. Each chapter is organized around the main events, people, and themes of a period in which the West significantly changed; thus, students learn about political and military events and social and cultural developments as they unfolded. This chronological integration also makes it possible for students to see the interconnections among varieties of historical experience—between politics and cultures, between public events and private experiences, between wars and diplomacy and everyday life. For teachers, our chronological approach ensures a balanced account and provides the opportunity to present themes within their greater context. But perhaps best of all, this approach provides a text that reveals history as a process that is constantly alive, subject to pressures, and able to surprise us.

An Expanded Vision of the West

Cultural borrowing between the peoples of Europe and their neighbors has characterized Western civilization from the beginning. Thus, we have insisted on an expanded vision of the West that includes the United States and fully incorporates Scandinavia, eastern Europe, and the Ottoman Empire. Now this vision encompasses an even wider global context than before, as Latin America, Africa, China, Japan, and India also come into the story. We have been able to offer sustained treatment of crucial topics such as Islam and to provide a more thorough examination of globalization than any competing text. Study of Western history provides essential background to today’s events, from debates over immigration to conflicts in the Middle East. Instructors have found this synthesis essential for helping students understand the West amid today’s globalization.

Updated Scholarship

As always, we have also incorporated the latest scholarly findings throughout the book so that students and instructors alike have a text on which they can confidently rely. In the fifth edition, we have included new and updated discussions of topics such as fresh archaeological evidence for the possible role of religion in stimulating the major changes of the Neolithic Revolution; the dating of the Great Sphinx in Egypt, the scholarly debate that could radically change our ideas of the earliest Egyptian history; the newest thinking on the origins of Islam; the crucial issues in the Investiture Conflict between pope and emperor; the impact of the Great Famine of the fourteenth century; the slave trade, especially its continuation into the nineteenth century; and the ways in which scholars are considering recent events within the context of the new digital world.

Study Aids to Support Active Reading and Learning

We know from our own teaching that students need all the help they can get in absorbing and making sense of information, thinking analytically, and understanding that history itself is often debated and constantly revised. With these goals in mind, we retained the class-tested learning and teaching aids that worked well in the previous editions, but we have also done more to help students distill the central story of each age.

Focused Reading

Each chapter begins with a vivid anecdote that draws readers into the atmosphere of the period and introduces the chapter’s main themes, accompanied by a full-page illustration. The Chapter Focus poses an overarching question at the start of the narrative to help guide students’ reading. Strategically placed at the end of each major section, a Review Question helps students assimilate core points in digestible increments. Key Terms and names that appear in boldface in the text have been updated to concentrate on likely test items; these terms are defined in the Glossary of Key Terms and People at the end of the book.

Reviewing the Chapter

At the end of each chapter, the Conclusion further reinforces the central developments covered in the chapter. The newly designed Chapter Review begins by asking students to revisit the key terms, identifying each and explaining its significance. Review Questions are also presented again so that students can revisit the chapter’s core points. Making Connections questions then follow and prompt students to think across the sections of a given chapter. A chronology of Important Events enables students to see the sequence and overlap of important events in a given period and asks students a guiding question that links two or more events in the chapter. Finally, a list of author-selected Suggested References directs students to print and online resources for further investigation.

Geographic Literacy

The map program of The Making of the West has been praised by reviewers for its comprehensiveness. In each chapter, we offer three types of maps, each with a distinct role in conveying information to students. Up to five full-size maps show major developments, up to four “spot” maps—small maps positioned within the discussion right where students need them—serve as immediate locators, and Mapping the West summary maps at the end of each chapter provide a snapshot of the West at the close of a transformative period and help students visualize the West’s changing contours over time. In this edition, we have added new maps and carefully considered each of the existing maps, simplifying where possible to better highlight essential information, and clarifying and updating borders and labels where needed.

Images and Illustrations

We have integrated art as fully as possible into the narrative. Over 240 images and illustrations were carefully chosen to reflect this edition’s broad topical coverage and geographic inclusion, reinforce the text, and show the varieties of visual sources from which historians build their narratives and interpretations. All artifacts, illustrations, paintings, and photographs are contemporaneous with the chapter; there are no anachronistic illustrations. The captions for the maps and art help students learn how to read visuals, and we have frequently included specific questions or suggestions for comparisons that might be developed.

Acknowledgments

In the vital process of revision, the authors have benefited from repeated critical readings by many talented scholars and teachers. Our sincere thanks go to the following instructors, whose comments often challenged us to rethink or justify our interpretations and who always provided a check on accuracy down to the smallest detail:

Stephen Andrews, Central New Mexico Community College; David Bachrach, University of New Hampshire; Curtis Bostick, Southern Utah University; Fedja Buric, Bellarmine University; Marie Therese Champagne, University of West Florida; Sviatoslav Dmitriev, Ball State University; Gabrielle Everett, Jefferson College; William Grose, Wytheville Community College; Elizabeth Heath, Baruch College-CUNY; Kevin Herlihy, University of Central Florida; Renzo Honores, High Point University; Chris Laney, Berkshire Community College; Christina Bosco Langert, Suffolk Community College; Elizabeth Lehfeldt, Cleveland State University; James Martin, Campbell University; Walter Miszczenko, College of Western Idaho; Yvonne Rivera, Montgomery County Community College; David Pizzo, Murray State University; Kevin Robbins, Indiana University/Purdue University; James Robertson, College of San Mateo; Brian Rutishauser, Fresno City College; Charles Levine, Mesa Community College; Lisa Ossian, Des Moines Area Community College; Ruma Salhi, Northern Virginia Community College; Christopher Sleeper, Mira Costa College; Allison Stein, Pellissippi State Community College; Pamela Stewart, Arizona State University; Nancy Vavra, University of Colorado at Boulder; K. Steven Vincent, North Carolina State University; and Joanna Vitiello, Rockhurst University.

Many colleagues, friends, and family members have made contributions to this work. They know how grateful we are. We also wish to acknowledge and thank the publishing team at Bedford/St. Martin’s who did so much to bring this revised edition to completion: editorial director Edwin Hill; publisher for history Michael Rosenberg; director of development for history Jane Knetzger; developmental editor Kathryn Abbott; associate editor Emily DiPietro; editorial assistant Lexi DeConti; senior marketing manager Sandra McGuire; senior production editor Kerri Cardone; art researcher Bruce Carson; text designer Lisa Buckley; cover designer Billy Boardman; and copyeditor Lisa Wehrle.

Our students’ questions and concerns have shaped much of this work, and we welcome all our readers’ suggestions, queries, and criticisms. Please contact us at our respective institutions or via history@macmillanhighered.com.