Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the Modern World From the Mongol Empire to the Present

by w. w. norton, Jeremy Adelman, Stephen Aron

This provocative narrative history dramatically departs from the standard "rise of the West" storyline that has driven world historiography for a century. A stellar group of historians paint a decidedly different modern world history, one in which the rise of the West was not predetermined and where global integration has manifested itself in fits and starts rather than as a smooth process over the last seven centuries. This fresh interpretation, driven by powerful ideas and colorful stories, promises to engage readers for decades to come.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Reference

544 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2002

Reviews

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a general reference work of history, this is a solid piece of work that tries hard to avoid Eurocentric tunnel vision. However, this was designed to be a high school text book...and for that purpose, it fails. The text is too small & too dense, the design & layout aren't conducive to student reading...it's simply too much. There is a fine line in designing a history text book that is both informative and easily digestible for high school students, and this book falls on the wrong side of that line. That said, as a general work of history, it's a perfectly adequate & encyclopedic reference work, so I'm settling on a middle of the road rating.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading the 2018 5th edition.

[Meredith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Although this is clearly written by (many) learned and accomplished people, it has left much to be desired from a student's point of view. There are rampant typos, errors, and misplacements. There is also a lack of consistency in terms of naming certain cities (for example: Canton/Guangzhou) without giving a reason why they are doing so.
I really wanted to like the way it was written, too, as I fondly recalled some of my more interesting history textbooks from high school and college, but unfortunately it was not cohesive nor did it flow well. I appreciate the amount of knowledge crammed into those pages, along with helpful illustrations and maps, but considering how much work went into this, the publisher should have had a copy editor and perhaps a ghost writer to finesse the facts into something accurate and interesting to read, as there is much of it!

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wouldn't normally give this five stars, since it's a textbook, and a rather dry textbook at that (I admit, I've been spoiled by the flowery language of The American Pageant, but still). This deserves five stars since it is not Eurocentric, which is very unique among history books. It avoids Eurocentricism in a novel yet genius way: instead of having each chapter devoted to a certain country, it devotes each chapter to a time period, and traces the history of EVERY country on Earth (just about) in that time period. Plus, it is extremely in depth.

[Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this textbook as a companion to a Coursera class of the same name offered by Princeton University. I bought the earlier 2nd edition of the book although the class was using the more current 3rd edition. I did not find any problems in using this earlier edition and the price was much, much cheaper (about 5 bucks). Given that price, it is an absolute bargain. I really enjoyed it because it covers so much about the non-western world, which is such an important part of world history. I just can't bear to give a textbook five stars but it was really well done.

[Matteo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 'world history' book which makes a very serious attempt at fighting eurocentrism. it was assigned reading in an international studies class - and possibly the most interesting assigned reading in any of my college humanities class.

[Reem Sleem · Rating 3 out of 5]

ده يعتبر اول كتاب تاريخ بحاول ان اقرأه باللغة الانجليزية و كمان بنتناقش في حاجات كتير عن تاريخ العالم مع احد العلماء الذين اشتركوا في كتابته و هو د/ جيرمي ادلمان ......

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book covers a lot of ground and ends up treating many subjects superficially.

The primary sources and the maps are great. The narrative is not so relevant nor endearing.

[Ariadna73 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little too heavy, and I am a history challenged person, so it was like water and oil for me.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not bad for a textbook. IT is easy reading but interestingly it glosses over some important facts while trying to give a very broad overview of history.