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Why This Book This Way

A History of Western Society grew out of the initial three authors’ desire to infuse new life into the study of Western Civilization. The three current authors, Clare Haru Crowston, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, and Joe Perry, who first used the book as students or teachers and took over full responsibilities with the eleventh edition, continue to incorporate the latest and best scholarship in the field. All three of us regularly teach introductory history courses and thus bring insights into the text from the classroom, as well as from new secondary works and our own research in archives and libraries.

In this new twelfth edition we aimed to enhance the distinctive attention to daily life that sparks students’ interest while also providing a number of innovative tools — both print and digital — designed to help students think historically and master the material. In response to the growing emphasis on historical thinking skills in the teaching of history at all levels, as well as to requests from our colleagues and current adopters, we have significantly expanded the book’s primary source program to offer a wide variety of sources, both written and visual, presented in several ways. Every chapter now includes “Thinking Like a Historian” (one per chapter), which groups at least five sources around a central question, and “Evaluating the Evidence” (three per chapter), which features an individual text or visual source.

The Story of A History of Western Society: Bringing the Past to Life for Students

At the point when A History of Western Society was first conceptualized, social history was dramatically changing the ways we understood the past, and the original authors decided to create a book that would re-create the lives of ordinary people in appealing human terms, while also giving major economic, political, cultural, and intellectual developments the attention they unquestionably deserve. The current authors remain committed to advancing this vision for today’s classroom, with a broader definition of social history that brings the original idea into the twenty-first century.

History as a discipline never stands still, and over the last several decades cultural history has joined social history as a source of dynamism. Because of its emphasis on the ways people made sense of their lives, A History of Western Society has always included a large amount of cultural history, ranging from foundational works of philosophy and literature to popular songs and stories. This focus on cultural history has been enhanced in recent editions in a way that highlights the interplay between men’s and women’s lived experiences and the ways men and women reflect on these experiences to create meaning. The joint social and cultural perspective requires — fortunately, in our opinion — the inclusion of objects as well as texts as important sources for studying history, which has allowed us to incorporate the growing emphasis on material culture in the work of many historians. We know that engaging students’ interest in the past is often a challenge, but we also know that the text’s hallmark approach — the emphasis on daily life and individual experience in its social and cultural dimensions — connects with students and makes the past vivid and accessible.

“Life” Chapters Connect the Past to the Present

Although social and cultural history can be found in every chapter, they are particularly emphasized in the acclaimed “Life” chapters that spark student interest by making the past palpable and approachable in human terms. The five chapters are Chapter 4: Life in the Hellenistic World, 336–30 B.C.E.; Chapter 10: Life in Villages and Cities of the High Middle Ages, 1000–1300; Chapter 18: Life in the Era of Expansion, 1650–1800; Chapter 22: Life in the Emerging Urban Society, 1840–1914; and Chapter 30: Life in an Age of Globalization, 1990 to the Present. Because we know that a key challenge of teaching history — and Western Civilization in particular — is encouraging students to appreciate the relevance of the past to our lives today, these five “Life” chapters each include a feature called “The Past Living Now” that examines an aspect of life today with origins in the period covered in that chapter. Featuring engaging topics such as the development of the modern university (Chapter 10) and the dawn of commercialized sports (Chapter 18), these essays were conceived with student interest in mind.

Primary Sources and Historical Thinking

Because understanding the past requires that students engage directly with sources on their own, this edition features a more expansive primary source program within its covers. “Thinking Like a Historian” (one in each chapter) groups at least five sources around a central question, with additional questions to guide students’ analysis of the evidence and suggestions for essays that will allow them to put these sources together with what they have learned in class. Topics include “Land Ownership and Social Conflict in the Late Republic” (Chapter 5); “The Rights of Which Men?” (Chapter 19); and “The Conservative Reaction to Immigration and Islamist Terrorism” (Chapter 30). “Evaluating the Evidence” ( three in each chapter) features an individual source, with headnotes and questions that help students understand the source and connect it to the information in the rest of the chapter. Selected for their interest and carefully integrated into their historical context, these sources provide students with firsthand encounters with people of the past along with the means and tools for building historical skills, including chronological reasoning, explaining causation, evaluating context, and assessing perspective. The suggestions for essays based on the primary sources encourage students to further expand their skills as they use their knowledge to develop historical arguments and write historical analyses.

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To give students abundant opportunities to hone their textual and visual analysis skills, as well as a sense of the variety of sources on which historians rely, the primary source program includes a mix of canonical and lesser-known sources; a diversity of perspectives representing ordinary and prominent individuals alike; and a wide variety of source types, from tomb inscriptions, diaries, sermons, letters, poetry, and drama to artifacts, architecture, and propaganda posters. In addition, we have quoted extensively from a wide range of primary sources in the narrative, demonstrating that such quotations are the “stuff ” of history. We believe that our extensive use of primary source extracts as an integral part of the narrative as well as in extended form in the primary source boxes will give students ample practice in thinking critically and historically.

Finally, the thoroughly revised companion reader, Sources for Western Society, Third Edition, provides a rich selection of documents to complement each chapter of the text and is FREE when packaged with the textbook.

Distinctive Essay Features Punctuate Larger Developments

In addition to the expanded primary source program and “The Past Living Now,” we are proud of the two unique boxed essay features in each chapter — “Individuals in Society” and “Living in the Past” — that personalize larger developments and make them tangible.

To give students a chance to see the past through ordinary people’s lives, each chapter includes one of the popular “Individuals in Society” biographical essays, which offer brief studies of individuals or groups, informing students about the societies in which they lived. We have found that readers empathize with these human beings as they themselves seek to define their own identities. The spotlighting of individuals, both famous and obscure, perpetuates the book’s continued attention to cultural and intellectual developments, highlights human agency, and reflects changing interests within the historical profession as well as the development of “microhistory.” Features include essays on Aristophanes, the ancient Athenian playwright who mercilessly satirized the demagogues and thinkers of his day; Anna Jansz of Rotterdam, an Anabaptist martyr; Hürrem, a concubine who became a powerful figure in the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth century; Rebecca Protten, a former slave and leader in the Moravian missionary movement; Samuel Crompton, the inventor of the spinning mule during the Industrial Revolution who struggled to control and profit from his invention; and Edward Snowden, a former CIA operative who leaked classified documents about American surveillance programs to the world press and was considered by some a hero and by others a traitor.

To introduce students to the study of material culture, “Living in the Past” essays use social and cultural history to show how life in the past was both similar to and different from our lives today. These features are richly illustrated with images and artifacts and include a short essay and questions for analysis. We use these essays to explore the deeper ramifications of aspects of their own lives that students might otherwise take for granted, such as consumer goods, factories, and even currency. Students connect to the people of the past through a diverse range of topics such as “Farming in the Hellenistic World,” “Roman Table Manners,” “Child’s Play,” “Coffeehouse Culture,” “The Immigrant Experience,” “Nineteenth-Century Women’s Fashion,” and “The Supermarket Revolution.”

New Coverage and Updates to the Narrative

This edition is enhanced by the incorporation of a wealth of new scholarship and subject areas that immerse students in the dynamic and ongoing work of history. Chapters 1–6 incorporate the exciting cross-disciplinary scholarship that has emerged over the last several decades on the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras, river valley civilizations, and the ancient Mediterranean. For example, archaeologists working at Göbekli Tepe in present-day Turkey have unearthed rings of massive, multi-ton, elaborately carved limestone pillars built around 9000 B.C.E. by groups of foragers, which has led to a rethinking of the links between culture, religion, and the initial development of agriculture. Similarly, new research on the peoples of Mesopotamia, based on cuneiform writing along with other sources, has led scholars to revise the view that Mesopotamians were fatalistic and to emphasize instead that they generally anticipated being well treated by the gods if they behaved morally. Throughout these chapters, material on cross-cultural connections, the impact of technologies, and changing social relationships has been added. In Chapter 14, we have updated and expanded the coverage of the conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires and the impact of the conquest on indigenous peoples, including new material on the economic exploitation of indigenous people, religious conversion, and European debates about indigenous people. In Chapter 16, there are several significant revisions. First, there is more coverage of global/colonial issues and of the interaction between intellectual ideas and social change. Second, with regard to the Scientific Revolution, there is a new section called “Why Europe?” that asks why the Scientific Revolution happened in Europe, as well as an expanded discussion of the relationship between religion and science. Third, a new section called “The Social Life of the Enlightenment” draws attention to recent scholarship linking the ideas of the Enlightenment to the social changes of the eighteenth century; this section includes coverage of the impact of contact with non-Europeans, debates on race, and women’s role in the Enlightenment. Chapter 20 pays increased attention to the global context of industrialization, including two new sections: “Why Britain?” explains why the Industrial Revolution originated in Britain and not elsewhere in the world, such as China or India; and “The Global Picture” discusses the global spread of industrialization. A new section on living standards for the working class addresses the impact of industrialization on working people.

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Other additions include a streamlined discussion of the role of women in classical Athens (Chapter 3); updated coverage of medicine in the Hellenistic period (Chapter 4); new material on the Vikings of western Europe (Chapter 8); expanded treatment of the growth of Russia’s land empire to complement attention to western European acquisition of overseas empires and new material on Peter the Great’s campaigns against the Ottomans (Chapter 15); increased coverage of communities and identities of the Atlantic world with material on the way colonial contacts help create national European identities as well as “African” and “Indian” identities (Chapter 17); updated coverage of the history of the family, popular culture, and medicine, including material on the use of colonial plants as medicines (Chapter 18); new material on the Congress of Vienna (Chapter 21) and expanded coverage of political ideologies of liberalism, republicanism, and nationalism (Chapters 21 and 23); new material on women’s roles in the European colonies and on women and imperialism (Chapter 24); expanded coverage of the First World War in the Middle East, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the postwar mandate system (Chapter 25); new discussion of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust and extended coverage of anti-Semitism and eugenics in Nazi Germany (Chapter 27); new material on violence and decolonization in the Algerian War of Independence (Chapter 28); and up-to-date coverage of contemporary events in the final chapter, including the refugee crisis, the euro crisis and Greek debt relief, Russian expansionism, issues surrounding terrorism and anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe, and the potential fragmentation of the European Union (Chapter 30).

Helping Students Understand the Narrative

We know firsthand and take seriously the challenges students face in understanding, retaining, and mastering so much material that is often unfamiliar. With the goal of making this the most student-centered edition yet, we continued to enhance the book’s pedagogy on many fronts. To focus students’ reading, each chapter opens with a chapter preview with focus questions keyed to the main chapter headings. These questions are repeated within the chapter and again in the “Review & Explore” section at the end of each chapter that provides helpful guidance for reviewing key topics. Each “Review & Explore” section concludes with a “Suggested Reading and Media Resources” listing that includes up-to-date readings on the vast amount of new work being done in many fields, as well as recommended documentaries, feature films, television, and Web sites.

To help students understand the bigger picture and prepare for exams, each chapter includes “Looking Back, Looking Ahead” conclusions that provide an insightful synthesis of the chapter’s main developments, while connecting to events that students will encounter in the chapters to come. In this way students are introduced to history as an ongoing process of interrelated events. These conclusions are followed by “Make Connections” questions that prompt students to assess larger developments across chapters, thus allowing them to develop skills in evaluating change and continuity, making comparisons, and analyzing context and causation.

To promote clarity and comprehension, boldface key terms in the text are defined in the margins and listed in the chapter review. Phonetic spellings are located directly after terms that readers are likely to find hard to pronounce. The chapter chronologies, which review major developments discussed in each chapter, mirror the key events of the chapter, and the topic-specific thematic chronologies that appear in many chapters provide a more focused timeline of certain developments. Once again, we also provide a unified timeline at the end of the text. Comprehensive and easy to locate, this timeline allows students to compare developments over the centuries.

The high-quality art and map program has been thoroughly revised and features hundreds of contemporaneous illustrations. To make the past tangible, and as an extension of our attention to cultural history, we include numerous artifacts — from swords and fans to playing cards and record players. As in earlier editions, all illustrations have been carefully selected to complement the text, and all include captions that inform students while encouraging them to read the text more deeply. High-quality full-size maps illustrate major developments in the narrative, and helpful spot maps are embedded in the narrative to locate areas under discussion. We recognize students’ difficulties with geography, and the new edition includes the popular “Mapping the Past” map activities. Included in each chapter, these activities give students valuable skills in reading and interpreting maps by asking them to analyze the maps and make connections to the larger processes discussed in the narrative.

In addition, whenever an instructor assigns the LaunchPad e-Book (which is free when bundled with the print book), students get full access to LearningCurve, an online adaptive learning tool that promotes mastery of the book’s content and diagnoses students’ trouble spots. With this adaptive quizzing, students accumulate points toward a target score as they go, giving the interaction a game-like feel. Feedback for incorrect responses explains why the answer is incorrect and directs students back to the text to review before they attempt to answer the question again. The end result is a better understanding of the key elements of the text. Instructors who actively assign LearningCurve report their students come to class prepared for discussion and their students enjoy using it. In addition, LearningCurve’s reporting feature allows instructors to quickly diagnose which concepts students in their classes are struggling with so they can adjust lectures and activities accordingly. The LaunchPad e-Book with LearningCurve is thus an invaluable asset for instructors who need to support students in all settings, from traditional lectures to hybrid, online, and newer “flipped” classrooms. To learn more about the benefits of LearningCurve and LaunchPad, see the “Versions and Supplements” section on page xvii.

Helping Instructors Teach with Digital Resources

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As noted, A History of Western Society is offered in Macmillan’s premier learning platform, LaunchPad, an intuitive, interactive e-Book and course space. Free when packaged with the print text or available at a low price when used stand-alone, LaunchPad grants students and teachers access to a wealth of online tools and resources built specifically for our text to enhance reading comprehension and promote in-depth study.

Developed with extensive feedback from history instructors and students, LaunchPad for A History of Western Society includes the complete narrative of the print book; the companion reader, Sources for Western Society; and LearningCurve, an adaptive learning tool that is designed to get students to read before they come to class. With new source-based questions in the test bank and in the LearningCurve, instructors now have more ways to test students on their understanding of sources and narrative in the book.

This edition also includes Guided Reading Exercises that prompt students to be active readers of the chapter narrative and autograded primary source quizzes to test comprehension of written and visual sources. These features, plus additional primary source documents, video sources and tools for making video assignments, map activities, flashcards, and customizable test banks, make LaunchPad a great asset for any instructor who wants to enliven the history of Western Civilization for students.

These new directions have not changed the central mission of the book, which is to introduce students to the broad sweep of Western Civilization in a fresh yet balanced manner. Every edition has incorporated new research to keep the book up-to-date and respond to the changing needs of readers and instructors, and we have continued to do this in the twelfth edition. As we have made these changes, large and small, we have sought to give students and teachers an integrated perspective so that they can pursue — on their own or in the classroom — the historical questions that they find particularly exciting and significant. To learn more about the benefits of LearningCurve and LaunchPad, see the “Versions and Supplements” section on page xvii.