Publishing this third edition of Ways of the World feels to me, its original author, a little like sending a child off to college or into the world. This familiar but changed and enhanced book is, I hope, more mature than it was at its birth in the first edition or in its growing-up years in the second. Much of this maturing of Ways of the World derives from its recent acquisition of a coauthor, Eric Nelson, a professor of history at Missouri State University, where he teaches world history and early modern European history. With a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, Eric has written several books about sectarian conflict and religious peacemaking in early modern France. And he is known as an enormously popular and skilled teacher, winning numerous awards, including the CASE/Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Teaching Professor of the Year in Missouri Award for 2012. Furthermore, he has become a national leader in online course design and pedagogy. More personally, Eric has been a delight to work with as we have collaborated in every dimension of preparing Ways of the World for its third edition. So henceforth and with great pleasure, the authorial “I” becomes a “we.”

Over the years following its initial appearance in 2008, Ways of the World has changed, or “grown up,” in other ways as well. Most substantially, since 2010 it has become not simply a textbook but also a “docutext” or sourcebook, containing chapter-based sets of written and visual primary sources. Reflected in the subtitle of the book, A Brief Global History with Sources, this addition has provided a “laboratory” experience located within the textbook, enabling students to engage directly with the evidence of documents and images—in short to “do history” even as they are reading history. Following the narrative portion of each chapter is a set of primary sources, either documentary or visual. Each collection is organized around a particular theme, issue, or question that derives from the chapter narrative. As the title of these features suggests, they enable students to “work with evidence” and thus begin to understand the craft of historians as well as their conclusions. They include brief headnotes that provide context for the sources, and they are accompanied by a series of probing Doing History questions appropriate for in-class discussion and writing assignments.

Furthermore, the organization of the narrative has been tightened and its content enhanced by integrating both the gender and the environmental material more fully. Coverage of particular areas of the world, such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Pacific Oceania, has been strengthened. And the book has more often highlighted individual people and particular events, which sometimes get lost in the broad sweep of world history. Finally, Ways of the World has acquired a very substantial electronic and online presence with a considerable array of pedagogical and learning aids.

Despite these changes, Ways of the World is also recognizably the same book that it was in earlier versions—it has the same narrative brevity, the same big picture focus, the same thematic and comparative structure, the same clear and accessible writing, and the same musing or reflective tone. All of this has attracted for Ways of the World a remarkable, and somewhat surprising, audience. Even before this third edition appeared, the book had been adopted by world history instructors at over 600 colleges and universities, and more than 275,000 students have used the book.

Tools for the Digital Age

Because the teaching of history is changing rapidly, we are pleased to offer online novel interactive complements to the new edition of Ways of the World via Bedford’s learning platform, known as LaunchPad. Free when packaged with the book, LaunchPad’s course space and interactive e-book are 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 e-book, as well as abundant primary documents, assignments, and activities. Key learning outcomes are addressed via formative and summative assessment, short-answer and essay questions, multiple-choice quizzing, and LearningCurve, an adaptive learning tool designed to get students to read before they come to class. With LearningCurve, students move through 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 before they attempt to answer the question again. The end result is a better understanding of the key elements of the text.

In addition to LearningCurve, we are delighted to offer 23 new online primary source projects called Thinking through Sources, one for each chapter of the book. These features, available only in LaunchPad, extend and substantially amplify the Working with Evidence source projects provided in the print book and also available in LaunchPad. They explore in greater depth a central theme from each chapter, and they integrate both documentary and visual sources. Most importantly, these LaunchPad features are uniquely surrounded by a distinctive and sophisticated pedagogy of self-grading exercises. Featuring immediate substantive feedback for each rejoinder, these exercises help students learn even when they select the wrong answer. More broadly, such exercises guide students in assessing their understanding of the sources, in organizing those sources for use in an essay, and in drawing useful conclusions from them. In this interactive learning environment, students will enhance their ability to build arguments and to practice historical reasoning. Thus this LaunchPad pedagogy does for skill development what LearningCurve does for content mastery and reading comprehension.

More specifically, a short quiz after each source offers students the opportunity to check their understanding of materials that often derive from quite distant times and places. Some questions focus on audience, purpose, point of view, limitations, or context, while others challenge students to draw conclusions about the source or to compare one source with another. Immediate substantive feedback for each rejoinder and the opportunity to try again create an active learning environment where students are rewarded for reaching the correct answer through their own process of exploration.

Two activities at the end of each Thinking through Sources exercise ask students to make supportable inferences and draw appropriate conclusions from sources with reference to a Guiding Question. In the Organize the Evidence activity, students identify which sources provide evidence for a topic that would potentially compose part of an answer to the guiding question. In the Draw Conclusions from the Evidence activity, students assess whether a specific piece of evidence drawn from the sources supports or challenges a conclusion related to the guiding question. Collectively these assignments create an active learning environment where reading with a purpose is reinforced by immediate feedback and support. The guiding question provides a foundation for in-class activities or a summative writing assignment.

These guiding questions challenge students to assess what the sources collectively reveal, drawing on documents and images alike. The Thinking through Sources feature linked to Chapter 5, for instance, presents a range of sources dealing with expressions of patriarchy in the Mediterranean, Indian, and Chinese civilizations. Its guiding question asks students to compare them, while its Organize the Evidence activity invites students to identify in turn those sources that shed light on marriage, the confinement of women, the authority of men, and opposition to patriarchal norms. The feature related to Chapter 21 offers both written and visual sources probing the nature of the Stalinist phenomenon with a guiding question that asks students to identify various postures—both positive and critical—toward it. The Draw Conclusions from the Evidence activity attached to this feature challenges students to identify whether specific pieces of evidence drawn from the sources support particular conclusions: that some individuals found opportunities for personal advancement in Stalin’s Soviet Union; that socialist ideals and values were betrayed during his rule; and that the Soviet Union accomplished some of the fundamental goals of Stalinism.

In a further set of features available only in LaunchPad, the text’s narrative is enhanced through Author Preview Videos (with Bob Strayer), which imaginatively introduce each chapter, and Another Voice Podcasts (with Eric Nelson), which enrich the treatment of particular issues and sometimes gently argue with the narrative text. Both the videos and the podcasts make extensive use of visuals.

LaunchPad also provides a simple, user-friendly platform for individual instructors to add their own voice, materials, and assignments to the text, guiding their students’ learning outside of the traditional classroom setting.

Available with training and support, LaunchPad can help take history teaching and learning into a new era. To learn more about the benefits of LearningCurve and LaunchPad and the different versions to package with LaunchPad, visit macmillanhighered.com/strayersources/catalog and see the Versions and Supplements section.

What Else Is New in the Third Edition?

In addition to the new online Thinking through Sources exercises and Eric Nelson’s Another Voice Podcasts described above, further substantive changes to this third edition include the following:

Promoting Active Learning

As all instructors know, students can often “do the assignment” or read the required chapter and yet have little understanding of it when they come to class. The problem, frequently, is passive studying—a quick once-over, perhaps some highlighting of the text—but little sustained involvement with the material. A central pedagogical problem in all teaching is how to encourage more active, engaged styles of learning. We want to enable students to manipulate the information of the book, using its ideas and data to answer questions, to make comparisons, to draw conclusions, to criticize assumptions, and to infer implications that are not explicitly disclosed in the text itself.

Ways of the World seeks to promote active learning in various ways. Most obviously, the source-based features in the book itself (Working with Evidence) and those housed separately on LaunchPad (Thinking through Sources) invite students to engage actively with documents and images alike, assisted by abundant questions to guide that engagement. The wrap-around pedagogy that accompanies the Thinking through Sources activities virtually ensures active learning, if it is required by instructors. So do the LearningCurve quizzes that help students actively rehearse what they have read and foster a deeper understanding and retention of the material.

Another active learning element involves motivation. A contemporary vignette opens each chapter with a story that links the past and the present to show the continuing resonance of history in the lives of contemporary people. Chapter 6, for example, begins by describing the inauguration in 2010 of Bolivian president Evo Morales at an impressive ceremony at Tiwanaku, the center of an ancient Andean empire, and emphasizing the continuing importance of this ancient civilization in Bolivian culture. At the end of each chapter, a short Reflections section raises provocative, sometimes quasi-philosophical, questions about the craft of the historian and the unfolding of the human story. We hope these brief essays provide an incentive for our students’ own pondering and grist for the mill of vigorous class discussions.

A further technique for encouraging active learning lies in the provision of frequent contextual markers. Student readers need to know where they are going and where they have been. Thus part-opening Big Picture essays preview what follows in the subsequent chapters. A chapter outline opens each chapter, while A Map of Time provides a chronological overview of major events and processes. In addition, a Seeking the Main Point question helps students focus on the main theme of the chapter. Each chapter also has at least one Summing Up So Far question that invites students to reflect on what they have learned to that point in the chapter. Snapshot boxes present succinct glimpses of particular themes, regions, or time periods, adding some trees to the forest of world history. A list of terms at the end of each chapter invites students to check their grasp of the material. As usual with books published by Bedford/St. Martin’s, a rich illustration program enhances the narrative.

Active learning means approaching the text with something to look for, rather than simply dutifully completing the assignment. Ways of the World provides such cues in abundance. A series of questions in the margins, labeled “change,” “comparison,” or “connection,” allows students to read the adjacent material with a clear purpose in mind. Big Picture Questions at the end of each chapter deal with matters not directly addressed in the text. Instead, they provide opportunities for integration, comparison, analysis, and sometimes speculation.

What’s in a Title?

The title of a book should evoke something of its character and outlook. The main title Ways of the World is intended to suggest at least three dimensions of the text.

The first is diversity or variation, for the “ways of the world,” or the ways of being human in the world, have been many and constantly changing. This book seeks to embrace the global experience of humankind in its vast diversity, while noticing the changing location of particular centers of innovation and wider influence.

Second, the title Ways of the World invokes major panoramas, patterns, or pathways in world history, as opposed to highly detailed narratives. Many world history instructors have found that students often feel overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of information that a course in global history can require of them. In the narrative sections of this book, the larger patterns or the “big pictures” of world history appear in the foreground on center stage, while the still-plentiful details, data, and facts occupy the background, serving in supporting roles.

A third implication of the book’s title lies in a certain reflective or musing quality of Ways of the World, which appears especially in the Big Picture essays that introduce each part of the book and in a Reflections section at the end of each chapter. These features of the book offer many opportunities for pondering larger questions. The Reflections section in Chapter 4, for example, explores how historians and religious believers sometimes rub each other the wrong way, while that of Chapter 12 probes the role of chance and coincidence in world history. The Chapter 21 Reflections asks whether historians should make judgments about the societies they study and whether it is possible to avoid doing so. The Big Picture introductions to Parts Three and Six raise questions about periodization, while that of Part Five explores how historians might avoid Eurocentrism when considering an era when Europe was increasingly central in world history. None of these issues can be easily or permanently resolved, but the opportunity to contemplate them is among the great gifts that the study of history offers us.

The Dilemma of World History: Inclusivity and Coherence

The great virtue of world history lies in its inclusivity, for its subject matter is the human species itself. No one is excluded, and all may find a place within the grand narrative of the human journey. But that virtue is also the source of world history’s greatest difficulty—telling a coherent story. How can we meaningfully present the planet’s many and distinct peoples and their intersections with one another in the confines of a single book or a single term? What prevents that telling from bogging down in the endless detail of various civilizations or cultures, from losing the forest for the trees, from implying that history is just “one damned thing after another”?

Less Can Be More

From the beginning, Ways of the World set out to cope with this fundamental conundrum of world history—the tension between inclusion and coherence—in several ways. The first is the relative brevity of the narrative. This means leaving some things out or treating them more succinctly than some instructors might expect. But it also means that the textbook need not overwhelm students or dominate the course. It allows for more creativity from instructors in constructing their own world history courses, giving them the opportunity to mix and match text, sources, and other materials in distinctive ways. Coherence is facilitated as well by a themes and cases approach to world history. Most chapters are organized in terms of broad themes that are illustrated with a limited number of specific examples.

The Centrality of Context: Change, Comparison, Connection

A further aid to achieving coherence amid the fragmenting possibilities of inclusion lies in maintaining the centrality of context, for in world history nothing stands alone. Those of us who practice world history as teachers or textbook authors are seldom specialists in the particulars of what we study and teach. Rather, we are “specialists of the whole,” seeking to find the richest, most suggestive, and most meaningful contexts in which to embed those particulars. Our task, fundamentally, is to teach contextual thinking.

To aid in this task, Ways of the World repeatedly highlights three such contexts, what I call the “three Cs” of world history: change/continuity, comparison, and connection. The first “C” emphasizes large-scale change, both within and especially across major regions of the world. Examples include the peopling of the planet, the breakthrough to agriculture, the emergence of “civilization,” the rise of universal religions, the changing shape of the Islamic world, the linking of Eastern and Western hemispheres in the wake of Columbus’s voyages, the Industrial Revolution, the rise and fall of world communism, and the acceleration of globalization during the twentieth century. The flip side of change, of course, is continuity, implying a focus on what persists over long periods of time. And so Ways of the World seeks to juxtapose these contrasting elements of human experience. While civilizations have changed dramatically over time, some of their essential features—cities, states, patriarchy, and class inequality, for example—have long endured.

The second “C” involves frequent comparison, a technique of integration through juxtaposition, bringing several regions or cultures into our field of vision at the same time. It encourages reflection both on the common elements of the human experience and on its many variations. Such comparisons are pervasive throughout the book, informing both the chapter narratives and many of the docutext features. Ways of the World explicitly examines the difference, for example, between the Agricultural Revolution in the Eastern and Western hemispheres; between the beginnings of Buddhism and the early history of Christianity and Islam; between patriarchy in Athens and in Sparta; between European and Asian empires of the early modern era; between the Chinese and the Japanese response to European intrusion; between the Russian and Chinese revolutions; and many more. Many of the primary source features are also broadly comparative or cross-cultural. For example, a document-based feature in Chapter 11 explores perceptions of the Mongols from the perspective of Persians, Russians, Europeans, and the Mongols themselves. Likewise, an image-based feature in Chapter 15 uses art and architecture to examine various expressions of Christianity in Reformation Europe, colonial Bolivia, seventeenth-century China, and Mughal India.

The final “C” emphasizes connection, networks of communication and exchange that increasingly shaped the character of the societies that participated in them. For world historians, cross-cultural interaction becomes one of the major motors of historical transformation. Such connections are addressed in nearly every chapter and in many docutext features. Examples include the clash of the ancient Greeks and the Persians; the long-distance commercial networks that linked the Afro-Eurasian world; the numerous cross-cultural encounters spawned by the spread of Islam; the trans-hemispheric Columbian exchange of the early modern era; and the growth of a genuinely global economy.

Organizing World History: Time, Place, and Theme

All historical writing occurs at the intersection of time, place, and theme. Time is the matrix in which history takes shape, allowing us to chart the changes and the continuities of human experience. Place recognizes variation and distinctiveness among societies and cultures as well as the importance of the environmental setting in which history unfolds. Theme reflects the need to write or teach about one thing at a time—the creation of empires, gender identity, the development of religious traditions, or cross-cultural trade, for example—even while exploring the linkages among them. Organizing a world history textbook involves balancing these three principles of organization in a flexible format that can accommodate a variety of teaching approaches and curricular strategies. In doing so, we have also drawn on our own sense of “what works” in the classroom and on best practice in the field.

This book addresses the question of time or chronology by dividing world history into six major periods. Each of these six “parts” begins with a Big Picture essay that introduces the general patterns of a particular period and raises questions about the problems historians face in periodizing the human past.

Part One (to 500 B.C.E.) deals in two chapters with beginnings—of human migration and social construction from the Paleolithic era through the Agricultural Revolution and the development of the First Civilizations. These chapters pursue such important themes on a global scale, illustrating them with regional examples treated comparatively.

Part Two examines the millennium of second-wave civilizations (500 B.C.E.–500 C.E.) and employs the thematic principle in exploring the major civilizations of Eurasia (Chinese, Indian, Persian, and Mediterranean), with separate chapters focusing on their empires (Chapter 3), their religious and cultural traditions (Chapter 4), and their social organization (Chapter 5). These Afro-Eurasian chapters are followed by a single chapter (Chapter 6) that examines regionally the second-wave era in sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, and Pacific Oceania.

Part Three, embracing the thousand years between 500 and 1500 C.E., reflects a mix of theme and place. Chapter 7 focuses topically on commercial networks across the world, while Chapters 8, 9, and 10 deal regionally with the Chinese, Islamic, and Christian worlds respectively. Chapter 11 treats pastoral societies as a broad theme and the Mongols as the most dramatic illustration of their impact on the larger stage of world history. Chapter 12, which bridges the two volumes of the book, presents an around-the-world tour in the fifteenth century, which serves both to conclude Volume 1 and to open Volume 2.

Part Four considers the early modern era (1450–1750) and treats each of its three chapters thematically. Chapter 13 compares European and Asian empires; Chapter 14 lays out the major patterns of global commerce and their consequences; and Chapter 15 focuses on cultural patterns, including the globalization of Christianity and the rise of modern science.

Part Five takes up the era of maximum European influence in the world, from 1750 to 1914. It charts the emergence of distinctively modern societies, devoting separate chapters to the Atlantic revolutions (Chapter 16) and the Industrial Revolution (Chapter 17). Chapters 18 and 19 focus on the growing impact of those European societies on the rest of humankind—first on the world of formal colonies and then on the still-independent states of China, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan.

Part Six, which looks at the most recent century (1914–2015), is perhaps the most problematic for world historians, given the abundance of data and the absence of time to sort out what is fundamental and what is peripheral. Its four chapters explore themes of global significance. Chapter 20 focuses on the descent of Europe into war, depression, and the Holocaust, and the global outcomes of this collapse. Chapter 21 examines global communism—its birth in revolution, its efforts to create socialist societies, its role in the cold war, and its abandonment by the end of the twentieth century. Chapter 22 turns the spotlight on the African, Asian, and Latin American majority of the world’s inhabitants, describing their exit from formal colonial rule and their emergence on the world stage as the developing countries. Chapter 23 concludes this account of the human journey by assessing the economic, environmental, and cultural dimensions of what we know as globalization.

“It Takes a Village”

In any enterprise of significance, “it takes a village,” as they say. Bringing Ways of the World to life in this new edition, it seems, has occupied the energies of several villages. Among the privileges and delights of writing and revising this book has been the opportunity to interact with our fellow villagers.

We are grateful to the community of fellow historians who contributed their expertise to this revision. Carter Findley, Humanities Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University, carefully read the sections of the book dealing with the Islamic world, offering us very useful guidance. Gregory Cushman from the University of Kansas provided us with an extraordinarily detailed analysis of places where our coverage of environmental issues might be strengthened. He also gave us a similarly comprehensive review of our Latin American and Pacific Oceania material. We also extend a special thanks to Stanley Burstein, emeritus at California State University–Los Angeles, who has been a wonderfully helpful mentor on all matters ancient, and to Edward Gutting and Suzanne Sturn for original translations of particular documents. We are grateful for their contributions.

The largest of these communities consists of the many people who read earlier editions and made suggestions for improvement. We offer our thanks to the following reviewers: Maria S. Arbelaez, University of Nebraska–Omaha; Veronica L. Bale, Mira Costa College; Christopher Bellitto, Kean University; Monica Bord-Lamberty, Northwood High School; Ralph Croizier, University of Victoria; Edward Dandrow, University of Central Florida; Peter L. de Rosa, Bridgewater State University; Amy Forss, Metropolitan Community College; Denis Gainty, Georgia State University; Steven A. Glazer, Graceland University; Sue Gronewald, Kean University; Andrew Hamilton, Viterbo University; J. Laurence Hare, University of Arkansas; Michael Hinckley, Northern Kentucky University; Bram Hubbell, Friends Seminary; Ronald Huch, Eastern Kentucky University; Elizabeth Hyde, Kean University; Mark Lentz, University of Louisiana–Lafayette; Kate McGrath, Central Connecticut State University; C. Brid Nicholson, Kean University; Donna Patch, Westside High School; Jonathan T. Reynolds, Northern Kentucky University; James Sabathne, Hononegah High School; Christopher Sleeper, Mira Costa College; Ira Spar, Ramapo College and Metropolitan Museum of Art; Kristen Strobel, Lexington High School; Michael Vann, Sacramento State University; Peter Winn, Tufts University; and Judith Zinsser, Miami University of Ohio.

We extend our thanks to the contributors to the supplements: Lisa Tran, California State University–Fullerton; Michael Vann, Sacramento State University; and John Reisbord. We would also like to offer a special thanks to Mike Fisher and Eric Taylor for their time and expertise producing the Another Voice Podcasts.

The Bedford village has been a second community sustaining this enterprise and the one most directly responsible for the book’s third edition. It would be difficult for any author to imagine a more supportive and professional publishing team. Our chief point of contact with the Bedford village has been Leah Strauss, our development editor. She has coordinated the immensely complex task of assembling a new edition of the book and has done so with great professional care, with timely responses to our many queries, and with sensitivity to the needs and feelings of authors, even when she found it necessary to decline our suggestions.

Others on the team have also exhibited that lovely combination of personal kindness and professional competence that is so characteristic of the Bedford way. Editorial director Edwin Hill and publisher Michael Rosenberg have kept an eye on the project amid many duties. Jane Knetzger, director of development, provided overall guidance as well as the necessary resources. Christina Horn, our production editor, managed the process of turning a manuscript into a published book and did so with both grace and efficiency. Operating behind the scenes in the Bedford village, a series of highly competent and always supportive people have shepherded this revised edition along its way. Photo researcher Bruce Carson identified and acquired the many images that grace this new edition of Ways of the World and did so with a keen eye and courtesy. Copy editor Jennifer Brett Greenstein polished the prose and sorted out our many inconsistent usages with a seasoned and perceptive eye. Sandra McGuire has overseen the marketing process, while Bedford’s sales representatives have reintroduced the book to the academic world. Jen Jovin supervised the development of ancillary materials to support the book, and William Boardman ably coordinated research for the lovely covers that mark Ways of the World. Eve Lehman conducted the always-difficult negotiations surrounding permissions with more equanimity than we could have imagined. And our editorial assistant Tess Fletcher handled the thousand and one details of this process so well that we were hardly aware that they were being handled.

Yet another “village” that contributed much to Ways of the World is the group of distinguished scholars and teachers who worked with Robert Strayer on an earlier world history text, The Making of the Modern World, published by St. Martin’s Press (1988, 1995). They include Sandria Freitag, Edwin Hirschmann, Donald Holsinger, James Horn, Robert Marks, Joe Moore, Lynn Parsons, and Robert Smith. That collective effort resembled participation in an extended seminar, from which I benefited immensely. Their ideas and insights have shaped my own understanding of world history in many ways and greatly enriched Ways of the World.

A final and much smaller community sustained this project and its authors. It is that most intimate of villages that we know as a marriage. Sharing that village with me (Robert Strayer) is my wife, Suzanne Sturn. It is her work to bring ideas and people to life onstage, even as I try to do so between these covers. She knows how I feel about her love and support, and no one else needs to. And across the street, I (Eric Nelson) would also like to thank two new residents of this village: my wife, Alice Victoria, and our little girl, Evelyn Rhiannon, to whom this new edition is dedicated. Without their patience and support, I could not have become part of such an interesting journey.

To all of our fellow villagers, we offer deep thanks for an immensely rewarding experience. We are grateful beyond measure.

Robert Strayer, La Selva Beach, California, Summer 2015

Eric Nelson, Springfield, Missouri, Summer 2015