World History In Brief: Major Patterns of Change and Continuity

by Peter N. Stearns

With its brief, global (rather than West-centered) approach, World History in Brief, Fifth Edition, seeks to show how different civilizations developed in a global context, and then encountered the various forces of contemporary life. Rather than overwhelm students, the chief goal of World History in Brief is to present the big picture, to facilitate comparison and assessment of change, and to highlight the major developments in the world's history. This text also presents the global interactions of major civilizations so that students can compare and assess changes. The compact size of this text gives instructors the opportunity to take advantage of additional supplementary readings.

Genres: History, World History, Historical

Paperback

First published May 9, 1990

About the author

Peter Nathaniel Stearns is a professor at George Mason University, where he was provost from January 1, 2000 to July 2014.
Stearns was chair of the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University and also served as the Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (now named Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences) at Carnegie Mellon University. In addition, he founded and edited the Journal of Social History. While at Carnegie Mellon, he developed a pioneering approach to teaching World History, and has contributed to the field as well through editing, and contributing to, the Routledge series, Themes in World History. He is also known for various work on the nature and impact of the industrial revolution and for exploration of new topics, particularly in the history of emotions.
He is active in historical groups such as the American Historical Association, the Society for French Historical Studies, the Social Science History Association and the International Society for Research on Emotion.

Reviews

[Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is about all the reading I can handle right now! For a history text, it is very well written and pretty interesting. Not a lot of emphasis on specific names and dates, more of a general overview of basic themes. I actually ended up reading this entire History text and I enjoyed it.