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The Western Heritage: Combined
This highly visual brief survey of Western civilization provides an exceptionally balanced survey of the political, social, and cultural development of Western civilization-its strengths and weaknesses, and the controversies surrounding it. The Teaching & Learning Classroom edition of the highly successful The Western Heritage, Ninth Edition provides your students with the most help available in reading, thinking, and applying the material they are learning in the text and in lecture. A series of pedagogical aids, in text and out of class study companions, as well as complete instructor presentational and assessment support makes this text the perfect choice for those looking to make history come alive for their students.
765 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
About the author
Donald Kagan
128 books245 followersDonald Kagan (May 1, 1932 – August 6, 2021) was a Lithuanian-born American historian and classicist at Yale University specializing in ancient Greece. He formerly taught in the Department of History at Cornell University. Kagan was considered among the foremost American scholars of Greek history and is notable for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
May 1, 2026
I hate history... Wish me luck on the AP test!!! I'm gonna fail I swear
March 31, 2015
This year, I read this book for my AP Euro class. Not the most exciting, but definitely better than the AP US book! I love European history, but my teacher's lectures were what I really looked forward to, and what I think will help me most on the big test coming up in May.
The book really focused on the economic and political aspect of events rather than the actual action, which kind of made me feel like I missed the all the good parts of history and the emotional part of reading I look for in books I read in my free time. While the book stated in maybe two pages all the battles of WWI, there was at least 5 pages of the effects of the Treaty of Paris, leaving out the true horror of war and the emotional effect it has on people.
Overall, the book helped me prepare for tests and filled in the blanks my teacher didn't cover, but lacked action. A good history book compared to others, it reported the facts and events of a history I have learned to love as much as TV drama.
The book really focused on the economic and political aspect of events rather than the actual action, which kind of made me feel like I missed the all the good parts of history and the emotional part of reading I look for in books I read in my free time. While the book stated in maybe two pages all the battles of WWI, there was at least 5 pages of the effects of the Treaty of Paris, leaving out the true horror of war and the emotional effect it has on people.
Overall, the book helped me prepare for tests and filled in the blanks my teacher didn't cover, but lacked action. A good history book compared to others, it reported the facts and events of a history I have learned to love as much as TV drama.
October 9, 2014
It's definitely not for everyone, being its bland and although it tries to go through a chronological order it can be confusing. With this history it's only so detailed so that you can have an understanding of what's happening. In some parts it's either extremely plain language or extremely advanced where they throw in one or two words you've never heard of and both ways they write throw off your understanding of the situation. The documents give some better understanding of like in the contemporary of the time and help out some more; to be honest the documents are easier to read than the actual main text.It still does its job and is informative (there is a little bit of bias but that's what happens when it's a text about european history) however...just takes some effort, I would've given up reading if I had a choice.
November 12, 2021
Lol my AP Euro Textbook. Pretty comprehensive ig? Hip Hughes videos explaining the concepts >>>
May 6, 2012
This book gave a very basic overview of European history. It failed to include important political developments, concentrating mainly on social changes. While social changes are incredibly important to history, knowing where one is in the political atmosphere is just as important. I would not recommend this book to any AP European History class, where I first encountered it.
February 15, 2015
Well, it cost blood, sweat, tears, I even threw up after the test today, but I'm done.
FREEEEE!
FREEEEE!
April 25, 2018
Free at last!!!
January 14, 2024
WORST THING TO EVER EXIST THIS BOOK MAKES ME SUICIDAL
September 24, 2026
Plainly: terrible.
You might think Kagan had life-changing with just about every significant European figure in history. He is completely enamored with the minute details of all his lovers' lives, and is unafraid to share his infatuation with the obscure achievements they made which the world forgot because we never remembered it.
Look, love is love; it's the 21st century and if you read with a disdain for queer people, then die and pray you reincarnate when we peed in buckets. I'm unaffected by a man whoring himself out for any fat and egotistical white man who surely stank, but I am affected by hundreds of pages of compulsory reading of a man as he goes on and on and on...and on about all his learning from his college days at ASU. In such flowery language so that their perfume and size obstructs any valuable information. He describes the ideas of platonism to a history student with no philosophical background as "distinguish[ing] between an eternal sphere of being and a perishable world in which humans actually live." What? Indeed it is somewhat accurate, but for the average eighteen-year-old with no concept of philosophy besides the hyper-fixation of impoverished baristas, this is too convoluted and simultaneously vague to tell much of anything other than .
His love is harmful to the reader. There is a winding paragraph on Erasmus' Adages and never a word on In Praise of Folly. Perhaps then Erasmus and Kagan had intimate nights which inspired Adages, and the effort touched Kagan's heart. But I'm not part of this relationship, I'm part of a class where I pay a hundred for a test.
So Raphael was kind—how is Bruni not in bold? His letter advocating for women's education is completely struck from the record. In fact, protofeminism during the Renaissance is boiled down to one meager paragraph, Pisan's achievements a slight afterthought, an email, as if she won't remain in our books by the next century, while Kagan and his romantic escapades will be foreign by—oh! Just now!
I'm accusing him of misogyny. He has less savory opinions in later chapters on women but I only want to deal with the beginning. Moving on: he is racist. He refers to the enslavement of African people, overwhelmingly, as "forced labor" which is much too tender to use over slavery. On the Aztec and Inca people, he suddenly forgets how to keep on talking, and misses mentioning the cultural eradication resulting from Spanish colonialism. Or how there is a substantial argument that they had committed a genocide on the Aztec and Inca peoples, only impossible for the deaths were unintentional. Let us forgive all the poor white men, who famously have nothing and thereby know nothing, whose ignorance perpetuates the trauma that every nonwhite child is certain to have due to being born.
He describes the "Black Legend" falsely. It's just not true. Defining as the idea that "all Spanish treatment of the Native Americans was unprincipled and inhumane" does a disservice to the anti-Spanish xenophobia behind it. It was thought that their cruelty was a result of their Spanish ethnicity, this is the problem, for otherwise that idea would just be a fair critique. Now, please, name one way the Spanish treated Native Americans humanely. Guess I'm in luck as Kagan justifies it while , and I'll give it in all its stupidity: "Certainly, the rulers of the native empires-as the Aztec demands for sacrificial victims attest—had often themselves been exceedingly cruel to their subjects."
Should white people save the dumb and doomed browns from their brutal, primitive brown rulers by invading their countries and killing everyone? The question that has plagued long disgraced American newspapers for a century. Only less unpleasant than the New York Post, the only publication funnier than the Onion. I recall in Vietnam this ideology went quite well. I see in Iran, a very popular war begun by an intelligent white hero, this has greatly improved the lives of Iranians, who love America. As a monkey of dirtied skin myself, of a country only not facing the same fate as the Aztecs because we successfully resisted colonists, I praise you Kagan, I admit my idiot monkey brain and beg for your approval, your saving-via-killing-and--me. Chinua Achebe, my dear, you were, for once, wrong. , thinking of those dimly lit nights with Erasmus. But really, how did the lower class Aztec people up for sacrifice benefit from dying—I thought them dying was the bad part?
It disappoints me that all the bad reviews are from people who can't read, study, or shy from AAVE despite being unbelievably pale and obviously struggling socially. There are strong reasons why this books is bad. If you are using it for a AP Euro class, buy the Princeton that year and sail for the AMSCO. You'll get a five.
There is a star because it is designed beautifully. Props to them.
You might think Kagan had life-changing with just about every significant European figure in history. He is completely enamored with the minute details of all his lovers' lives, and is unafraid to share his infatuation with the obscure achievements they made which the world forgot because we never remembered it.
Look, love is love; it's the 21st century and if you read with a disdain for queer people, then die and pray you reincarnate when we peed in buckets. I'm unaffected by a man whoring himself out for any fat and egotistical white man who surely stank, but I am affected by hundreds of pages of compulsory reading of a man as he goes on and on and on...and on about all his learning from his college days at ASU. In such flowery language so that their perfume and size obstructs any valuable information. He describes the ideas of platonism to a history student with no philosophical background as "distinguish[ing] between an eternal sphere of being and a perishable world in which humans actually live." What? Indeed it is somewhat accurate, but for the average eighteen-year-old with no concept of philosophy besides the hyper-fixation of impoverished baristas, this is too convoluted and simultaneously vague to tell much of anything other than .
His love is harmful to the reader. There is a winding paragraph on Erasmus' Adages and never a word on In Praise of Folly. Perhaps then Erasmus and Kagan had intimate nights which inspired Adages, and the effort touched Kagan's heart. But I'm not part of this relationship, I'm part of a class where I pay a hundred for a test.
So Raphael was kind—how is Bruni not in bold? His letter advocating for women's education is completely struck from the record. In fact, protofeminism during the Renaissance is boiled down to one meager paragraph, Pisan's achievements a slight afterthought, an email, as if she won't remain in our books by the next century, while Kagan and his romantic escapades will be foreign by—oh! Just now!
I'm accusing him of misogyny. He has less savory opinions in later chapters on women but I only want to deal with the beginning. Moving on: he is racist. He refers to the enslavement of African people, overwhelmingly, as "forced labor" which is much too tender to use over slavery. On the Aztec and Inca people, he suddenly forgets how to keep on talking, and misses mentioning the cultural eradication resulting from Spanish colonialism. Or how there is a substantial argument that they had committed a genocide on the Aztec and Inca peoples, only impossible for the deaths were unintentional. Let us forgive all the poor white men, who famously have nothing and thereby know nothing, whose ignorance perpetuates the trauma that every nonwhite child is certain to have due to being born.
He describes the "Black Legend" falsely. It's just not true. Defining as the idea that "all Spanish treatment of the Native Americans was unprincipled and inhumane" does a disservice to the anti-Spanish xenophobia behind it. It was thought that their cruelty was a result of their Spanish ethnicity, this is the problem, for otherwise that idea would just be a fair critique. Now, please, name one way the Spanish treated Native Americans humanely. Guess I'm in luck as Kagan justifies it while , and I'll give it in all its stupidity: "Certainly, the rulers of the native empires-as the Aztec demands for sacrificial victims attest—had often themselves been exceedingly cruel to their subjects."
Should white people save the dumb and doomed browns from their brutal, primitive brown rulers by invading their countries and killing everyone? The question that has plagued long disgraced American newspapers for a century. Only less unpleasant than the New York Post, the only publication funnier than the Onion. I recall in Vietnam this ideology went quite well. I see in Iran, a very popular war begun by an intelligent white hero, this has greatly improved the lives of Iranians, who love America. As a monkey of dirtied skin myself, of a country only not facing the same fate as the Aztecs because we successfully resisted colonists, I praise you Kagan, I admit my idiot monkey brain and beg for your approval, your saving-via-killing-and--me. Chinua Achebe, my dear, you were, for once, wrong. , thinking of those dimly lit nights with Erasmus. But really, how did the lower class Aztec people up for sacrifice benefit from dying—I thought them dying was the bad part?
It disappoints me that all the bad reviews are from people who can't read, study, or shy from AAVE despite being unbelievably pale and obviously struggling socially. There are strong reasons why this books is bad. If you are using it for a AP Euro class, buy the Princeton that year and sail for the AMSCO. You'll get a five.
There is a star because it is designed beautifully. Props to them.
May 30, 2020
Of course, very informative and endlessly intriguing. I could get lost in this book with ease.
Read
April 28, 2022i hav every right to add this to my goodreads yesssss
July 17, 2023
Rating AP textbooks what I got on the exam part 2. In al honesty though this was an awful textbook. It literally made no sense half the time and was suuuuuper boring.
April 29, 2024
Read almost all of it, and wow it took a while.
May 20, 2024
manifesting that five 🔥🔥
May 6, 2025
FREE AT LAST
June 15, 2025
I only studied chapters 12, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, and 24 out of the 31 chapters for my civilization course, and I'm not getting back to studying this. :)
August 21, 2009
Finally finished with the AP test, so there is no longer a need to carry this thing round with me everywhere I go. Finally.
As far as history textbooks go, this isn't a bad one, although the bias sometimes irritates me. I don't really have to read this again, so I guess it's not so much of a problem.
As far as history textbooks go, this isn't a bad one, although the bias sometimes irritates me. I don't really have to read this again, so I guess it's not so much of a problem.
Want to Read
December 27, 2014This was a required text for my college World History class. It's very dry, which makes it difficult to read. I actually fell asleep twice while reading it, which has never happened to me before. Normally I would have sold it once the class was over, but I've held onto it for reference for my genealogy research.
April 26, 2022
1/5 caused depression
*cries in ap euro*
disclaimer: im doing this out of spite; the textbook isn't all bad lmao
why was everything explained in such a drawn out and roundabout way????? maybe it wasn't, but i have a short attention span and i couldn't focus while reading for the life of me 😭😭😭😭😭😭
either way i got through it and its finally over!!!!!!
*cries in ap euro*
disclaimer: im doing this out of spite; the textbook isn't all bad lmao
why was everything explained in such a drawn out and roundabout way????? maybe it wasn't, but i have a short attention span and i couldn't focus while reading for the life of me 😭😭😭😭😭😭
either way i got through it and its finally over!!!!!!
July 24, 2011
The Western Heritage: Since 1300
Kagan, Donald
required text for college history course, about american history
Kagan, Donald
required text for college history course, about american history
July 31, 2011
This was a pretty good text from my first college course.
September 2, 2011
While I enjoyed my class, I wasn't awed by this book. It was good, but nothing to write home about!
December 31, 2012
Great text for political an economic history. I feel it is a little weak on social history though.
May 15, 2016
It's a European history textbook and reads like one—but it's clear, well-organized, and readable.
April 19, 2017
i cried
Read
August 13, 2017idk why there were so many typos specifically in the sections about Russia but w/e history's neat
May 10, 2022
You brought me so much pain.
Read
July 9, 2012Jokes, I didn't actually read the whole thing... AP Euro sophomore year, here I come!
May 1, 2017
This isn't the exact edition that I read for my AP European History class, but it is close enough. This is the first textbook that I've read cover to cover. Kagan provides history in an intelligent and understandable way, which is hard to do considering how much history he had to squeeze into such short space.
Read
February 13, 2019I don't feel obligated to rate the because it was my school book, but I'm more than willing to review it.
I learned what I needed tolerance from it, but for the most part it was...... Dry? It was definitely boring at parts, but it did what it needed to do. I'm just glad to be done with this hunk, to be honest. I'm very ready to move on to something else.
I learned what I needed tolerance from it, but for the most part it was...... Dry? It was definitely boring at parts, but it did what it needed to do. I'm just glad to be done with this hunk, to be honest. I'm very ready to move on to something else.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews