Western Civilizations: Their History and Culture

This Twentieth Edition of Western Civilizations is a landmark in a
long and continuing journey. Since its original publication in 1941,
this book has been assiduously updated by succeeding generations
of historians who have kept it at the forefront of the field in both
scholarship and pedagogical innovation. Our newest edition carries
this legacy forward, further honing the tools we have developed to
empower students—our own and yours—to engage effectively with
the themes, sources, and challenges of history. It presents a clear
and concise narrative of events that unfolded over many thousands
of years, supplemented by a compelling selection of primary sources
and striking images. At the same time, it features a unified program
of pedagogical elements that guide students from understanding
core content to reading and analyzing historical sources and, finally,
to developing a sophisticated sense of the ways that historians
reconstruct the past on the basis of those sources. This framework,
and a brand-new set of activities built around select sources from
each chapter, helps students to read and interpret historical evidence
on their own, encouraging them to become active participants in the
learning process and helping them to think historically.