Worlds Together, Worlds Apart

Each chapter discusses all regions of the globe and highlights a major world history story or concept, such as the formation of the Silk Road or the spread of the Black Death. This thematic approach within a chronological framework helps students to make comparisons and connections across the world, and leaves an imprint that lasts longer than names, places, and dates. The integrated approach also allows students to track trends and patterns across time and place and between societies. 

Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, Third Edition, highlights the tension between the forces of global integration that drew the world together and the ongoing efforts of each culture to stand as worlds apart by maintaining their own identities and traditions. This struggle is on display in every chapter in the book and is explored through three foundational themes:

• Cultural exchange and interaction between societies
• Changing power relationships between societies and regions of the world
• The struggle to maintain identity while facing ever-increasing globalization

The authors take a non-Eurocentric perspective throughout. For much of the book, they argue that cultures such as the Han, Mongols, and Islamic dynasties were more advanced and dominant than the West, and that 19th- and 20th-century Western imperialism was incomplete and ultimately fell apart.

The text has been noticeably shortened and new pedagogical features added to increase the appeal to a wide range of instructors and students.

• A full 20% reduction in the narrative heightens world history stories and themes.
• New Storyline features appear after the chapter introduction, and are designed to highlight the chapter themes and show how they apply to each region of the world.
• Chapter introductions have been rewritten to highlight chapters themes to help students stay on top of the most important global developments in a given period.

In-text features include:

• Focus Questions that appear throughout each chapter, keeping students focused on the big picture.
• Study Questions at the end of each chapter that ask students to think analytically about the material
• Revised end-of-chapter global chronologies that make it easier to see comparative developments.
• An in-text map program with "guiding" questions designed to help students read maps and understand the relationship between history and geography.
• In-text primary sources with critical questions designed to help students learn how to analyze and interpret primary sources.

StudySpace, the free student website, features World History Tours powered by Google Maps. These tours trace European and global developments over time, touching down on locations to launch documents and images for analysis. Additionally, StudySpace gives students even more geography help with interactive maps and map worksheets for each textbook map, and includes nearly 100 new primary source documents, for a total of nearly 350 sources.