THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER AND BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR

FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2022

'Pacey and potentially revolutionary' Sunday Times

'Iconoclastic and irreverent ... an exhilarating read' The Guardian

For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternat...

The Silk Road is as iconic in world history as the Colossus of Rhodes or the Suez Canal. But what was it, exactly? It conjures up a hazy image of a caravan of camels laden with silk on a dusty desert track, reaching from China to Rome. The reality was different--and far more interesting--as revealed in this new history.

In The Silk Road, Valerie Hansen describes the remarkable archeological finds that revolutionize our understanding of these trade routes. For centuries, key records remained h...

The first full, interpretive synthesis for a generation on the rise of the Mediterranean world from its very beginnings up to the threshold of Classical times - winner of the Wolfson History Prize. The Mediterranean has been for millennia one of the global cockpits of human endeavour. World-class interpretations exist of its Classical and subsequent history, but there has been remarkably little holistic exploration of how its societies, culture and economies first came into being, despite the...

Well-written and engaging, this book deals with complex and wide-ranging material in a clear and accessible way and is up-to-date with current historiographical trends, such as digital history which students need to know about. It also includes a companion website which augments the features, such as marginal glosses, in the text, ensuring it is user-friendly for students Offers a clear and up-to-date text on historiography, something students on all history degrees are required to engage wit...

In this groundbreaking work, William Cronon gives us an environmental perspective on the history of nineteenth-century America. By exploring the ecological and economic changes that made Chicago America's most dynamic city and the Great West its hinterland, Mr. Cronon opens a new window onto our national past.

This is the story of city and country becoming ever more tightly bound in a system so powerful that it reshaped the American landscape and transformed American culture. The world that e...

There is still a gap in how the period after 1989-1991 is conceptualised. The proposed book's challenging designation of the 'transatlantic era' as the motif for 1989-2020 enables the reader to think differently about the period we have been living through. The separation of the 1989-2020 period into three clearly marked-out decades works well for structuring the book, providing a clear overview and supportive base for the book's principal argument.

Accessible for BA and MA students. Makes fu...

Bring the history of Western society to life

Praised for its easy-to-read narrative and attention to the lives of ordinary people, A History of Western Society, Fourteenth Edition, includes even more tools to engage students and save instructors time. A signature focus on social and cultural history helps students engage with and think critically about the past. Achieve, a powerful course platform, combines the full e-textbook with a wealth of additional primary sources, tutorials, activities...

The Routledge Companion to Big History guides readers though the variety of themes and concepts that structure contemporary scholarship in the field of big history. The volume is divided into five parts, each representing current and evolving areas of interest to the community, including big history’s relationship to science, social science, the humanities, and the future, as well as teaching big history and ‘little big histories’. Considering an ever-expanding range of theoretical, ped...

Bring the history of Western society to life

Praised for its easy-to-read narrative and attention to the lives of ordinary people, A History of Western Society, Fourteenth Edition, includes even more tools to engage students and save instructors time. A signature focus on social and cultural history helps students engage with and think critically about the past. Achieve, a powerful course platform, combines the full e-textbook with a wealth of additional primary sources, tutorials, activities...

In this fully revised fourth edition, this book treats globalization from several vantage points, showing how these help grasp the nature of globalization both in the past and today.