Publisher's Synopsis
"World history explores the human past, around the globe, to help us understand the world we live in today. It seeks to identify how major forces have developed over time, like patterns of migration or world trade. It explores the cultures and political institutions of different regions, to help explain commonalities and differences. World history builds on a growing amount of historical scholarship, some of which has truly altered the picture of the past. It involves a rich array of stories and examples of human variety, intriguing in themselves. It helps develop skills that are vital not just to the history classroom, but to effective operation in a global society-skills like comparing different societies, appreciating various viewpoints, identifying big changes and continuities in the human experience. Always, however, it uses the past as a prologue to the present. World historians argue that no one society, past or present, can be u
