The West and the World: A History of Civilization : From the Ancient World to 1700 (The West & the World) |  | Author: Kevin Reilly
Publisher: Markus Wiener Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $32.95
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Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 46451
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2 Revised
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.8 x 1
ISBN: 1558761527
Dewey Decimal Number: 909.09821
EAN: 9781558761520
ASIN: 1558761527
Publication Date: January 1, 1997
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Product Description
This text engages students and provokes discussion by presenting the past through the prism of current and perennial issues. Interpretive chapters on such topics as gender, religion, war, ecology, and nationalism create both thematic narratives and the strands of a larger chronological account. The book makes great ideas accessible, explores major historical turning points, and reveals the dynamic of increasing global interactions (trade, migrations, etc.). It also compares cultures and civilizations while giving voice to individual lives. This volume explores perennial issues. Gender relations are examined across the neolithic and urban revolutions. Issues of class, civility, and citizenship come to life in a history of Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Chinese, and Muslim cities. Ideas of love and sex are compared in European, Japanese and Indian history. The social dislocations of empire are compared in Rome and China. The Crusades are viewed through Muslim as well as Christian sources. In addition the seventeenth-century scientific revolution is compared with science in China and the Muslim world.
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| Customer Reviews:
 a review from Choice June 16, 2006
history buff
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
"Reilly's text is the most teachable . . . one of the best conceived chronological narratives of world history . . . leaves students with a much more sophisticated vision of the global past and present."
-Lynda Schaffer (Tufts University)
 Interpreting The Modern World February 5, 2006
Chimonsho (Turtle Island)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Reilly's book is a quite serviceable introduction to modern world history. It is not a conventional survey text (you know, the kind with 4 authors, 8 editions, and precious little pizzazz), but rather an interpretive study comprising a series of closely linked essays on key historical issues: industrialization, racism, individualism, nationalism, etc. The author's deft explication of political ideas is probably his strongest suit. Still, there's plenty of facts and data here, so it can be used in college courses or read with profit by the educated public. Uncluttered, well-drawn maps help students locate places mentioned in the text, and the illustrations are also valuable. The cost is very reasonable, about $50 less than the average survey text. The publisher has kept the price down by reducing production costs; this shows in the absence of color pictures, and the index is so skimpy that it's not really adequate. A more serious flaw is the overall neglect of gender, and women's history in general. Though the book has been updated since the last edition in 1989, it has a vaguely archaic feel to it now, as if the perspective hasn't changed much since the Cold War despite the added detail. Still, it has many merits, not least an accessible style and the author's willingness to offer boldly-stated opinions. On balance, Markus Weiner has done well to make this new version available.
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