Western Civilizations

The chapter introductions start with a hook or story that captures the larger themes of the chapter. The authors use a story-telling approach throughout each chapter, emphasizing the importance of continuity and change. 

Inspired by Cole’s and Symes’s own teaching experiences, the new pedagogical features are designed to help students develop critical-thinking skills and master the core content.

• New “Before You Read This Chapter” pedagogy gets students primed for what they need to look for when reading the chapter.

• New “After You Read This Chapter” pedagogy makes sure that students understand what they have read and that they have mastered the core content.

Students need to learn how to analyze primary sources and develop good map skills. Western Civilizations gives them ample opportunity to do both.

• New primary-source features, “Interpreting Visual Evidence” and “Competing Viewpoints,” teach students how to analyze both textual and visual sources and help them understand that history is open to interpretation.

• A new map program with guiding questions encourages students to develop basic map skills and to understand the relationship between history and geography.

• A new illustration program includes enhanced photo captions that ask students to think critically about the relationship between an illustration and what they have read in the main narrative.

The narrative in Western Civilizations has been strategically tightened to heighten the chapter themes and make the text accessible to a wider range of students.

• A balance between contemporary research and the central narrative that students need. Joshua Cole and Carol Symes both teach the Western Civilizations course each year and know what works in the classroom, as well as the latest developments in the field.


• A balance of classic topics with more global coverage. The new edition expands its geographic and cultural contexts to include the wider Mediterranean World, Islam and Byzantium, Eastern Europe, and the vast hybrid cultures that resulted from Western encounters in Asia, Africa, and the Americas after 1492.

The Western Civilizations electronic media package offers students the tools they need for research and review, including:

• nearly 350 online documents (100 new), each with a media-analysis worksheet
• author-insight video and podcasts by our new author team, Joshua Cole and Carol Symes
• Western Civilizations History Tours, powered by Google Maps
• interactive maps and map worksheets
• focus questions, chapter quizzes, flashcards, chapter outlines, summaries, and more