Erudite, wide-ranging, a work of dazzling scholarship written with extraordinary flair, Civilizations redefines the subject that has fascinated... historians from Thucydides to Gibbon to Spengler to Fernand Braudel: the nature of civilization. To the author, Oxford historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a society's relationship to climate, geography, and ecology are paramount in determining its degree of success. "Unlike previous attempts to write the comparative history of civilizations," he writes, "it is arranged environment by environment, rather than period by period or society by society." Thus, for example, tundra civilizations of Ice Age Europe are linked with those of the Inuit of the Pacific Northwest, the Mississippi Mound Builders with the deforesters of eleventh-century Europe. Civilizations brilliantly connects the world of ecologist, geologist, and geographer with the panorama of cultural history.

The West Transformed is a comprehensive, mainstream introductory Western Civilization or European History textbook. It covers a variety of fields of... history including social history, but stresses traditional topics and a strong narrative. The development of civilization in the West is presented as a series of cultural, technological, social, and political transformations. A strong unifying theme focuses on the tensions between continuity and change in human affairs.

For today's busy student, we've created a new line of highly portable books at affordable prices. Each title in the Books à la Carte Plus program... features the exact same content from our traditional textbook in a convenient notebook-ready, loose-leaf version — allowing students to take only what they need to class. As an added bonus, each Books à la Carte Plus edition is accompanied by an access code to all of the resources found in one of our best-selling multimedia products. Best of all? Our Books à la Carte Plus titles cost less than a used textbook!   Civilizations Past and Present, written by specialists in Islamic, African, Asian, Ancient, and East European history — offers a clear and accessible analysis of diverse trends shaping world history.   Civilizations Past and Present, now in its Twelfth Edition, is a survey text well known in the marketplace for its readability, offering a strong narrative exploration of world history that examines details at levels appropriate for both students and instructors. The book’s narrative–enriched by photographs, maps, primary source documents, timelines, and other pedagogical aids–places great emphasis on the connections between the world’s many cultures and regions. The book uses intriguing avenues of historical interpretation and examines all of the major areas of historical study:  social, political, economic, religious, cultural, and geographic.

Civilizations Past and Present , written by specialists in Islamic, African, Asian, Ancient, and East European history— offers a clear and... accessible analysis of diverse trends shaping world history.   Civilizations Past and Present, now in its Twelfth Edition, is a survey text well known in the marketplace for its readability, offering a strong narrative exploration of world history that examines details at levels appropriate for both students and instructors. The book’s narrative–enriched by photographs, maps, primary source documents, timelines, and other pedagogical aids–places great emphasis on the connections between the world’s many cultures and regions. The book uses intriguing avenues of historical interpretation and examines all of the major areas of historical study:  social, political, economic, religious, cultural, and geographic.

Civilizations Past and Present , written by specialists in Islamic, African, Asian, Ancient, and East European history— offers a clear and... accessible analysis of diverse trends shaping world history.   Civilizations Past and Present, now in its Twelfth Edition, is a survey text well known in the marketplace for its readability, offering a strong narrative exploration of world history that examines details at levels appropriate for both students and instructors. The book’s narrative–enriched by photographs, maps, primary source documents, timelines, and other pedagogical aids–places great emphasis on the connections between the world’s many cultures and regions. The book uses intriguing avenues of historical interpretation and examines all of the major areas of historical study:  social, political, economic, religious, cultural, and geographic.

Civilizations Past and Present, written by specialists in Islamic, African, Asian, Ancient, and East European history— offers a clear and... accessible analysis of diverse trends shaping world history. Civilizations Past and Present, now in its Twelfth Edition, is a survey text well known in the marketplace for its readability, offering a strong narrative exploration of world history that examines details at levels appropriate for both students and instructors. The book’s narrative–enriched by photographs, maps, primary source documents, timelines, and other pedagogical aids–places great emphasis on the connections between the world’s many cultures and regions. The book uses intriguing avenues of historical interpretation and examines all of the major areas of historical study: social, political, economic, religious, cultural, and geographic.

Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. All over the world,... more and more people study at Western-style universities, work for Western-style companies, vote for Western-style governments, take Western medicines, wear Western clothes, and play Western sports. Yet six hundred years ago the petty kingdoms of Western Europe seemed like miserable backwaters, ravaged by incessant war and pestilence. It was Ming China or Ottoman Turkey that had the look of world civilizations. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? In Civilization: The West and the Rest, acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that, beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts that the Rest lacked: competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic. These were the ‘killer applications’ that allowed the West to leap ahead of the Rest; opening global trade routes, exploiting new scientific knowledge, evolving representative government, more than doubling life expectancy, unleashing the industrial revolution, and hugely increasing human productivity. Civilization shows exactly how a dozen Western empires came to control three-fifths of mankind and four-fifths of the world economy. Yet now, Ferguson argues, the days of Western predominance are numbered because the Rest have finally downloaded the six killer apps the West once monopolized – while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside the clashes of civilizations, Civilization recasts world history with verve and wit. Boldly argued but also teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.

In the raucous decade following World War I, newly blurred boundaries between male and female created fears among the French that theirs was becoming a... civilization without sexes. This new gender confusion became a central metaphor for the War's impact on French culture and led to a marked increase in public debate concerning female identity and woman's proper role. Mary Louise Roberts examines how in these debates French society came to grips with the catastrophic horrors of the Great War.In sources as diverse as parliamentary records, newspaper articles, novels, medical texts, writings on sexology, and vocational literature, Roberts discovers a central question: how to come to terms with rapid economic, social, and cultural change and articulate a new order of social relationships. She examines the role of French trauma concerning the War in legislative efforts to ban propaganda for abortion and contraception, and explains anxieties about the decline of maternity by a crisis in gender relations that linked soldiery, virility, and paternity.Through these debates, Roberts locates the seeds of actual change. She shows how the willingness to entertain, or simply the need to condemn, nontraditional gender roles created an indecisiveness over female identity that ultimately subverted even the most conservative efforts to return to traditional gender roles and irrevocably altered the social organization of gender in postwar France.

Drawing on stories from diverse women who have been single for many years, Trimberger explodes the idea that fulfillment comes only through coupling... with a soulmate. Instead she presents an exciting new identity for women in the twenty-first century: the new single woman--a woman who is content with her single life.These gripping personal accounts of how single women's lives evolve over time, combined with Trimberger's incisive analysis, blend to provide a much-needed cultural roadmap for every single woman who is striving to create a satisfying and meaningful life. Trimberger's all-inclusive, paradigm-shifting notion is one that ultimately strengthens and enriches both single women and couples.

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) designed New York City's Central Park, Brooklyn's Prospect Park, Chicago's South Park and Jackson Park, Montreal's... Mount Royal Park, the park systems of Boston and Buffalo, and many others. But Olmsted also designed parkways and neighborhoods, reshaping cities around their parks. He thus reinvented the American urban landscape as a democratic outdoor setting that encouraged a new kind of participation in city life. Olmsted was one of the most gifted of American writers of his generation: prior to designing Central Park, he had written five important books, including The Cotton Kingdom (an account of his travels in the slave states), and his writings on American landscapes are unfailingly lively, eloquent, and passionate. Civilizing American Cities collects Olmsted's plans for New York, San Francisco, Buffalo, Montreal, Chicago, and Boston; his suburban plans for Berkeley, California and Riverside, Illinois; and a generous helping of his writings on urban landscape in general. These selections, expertly edited and introduced, are not only enjoyable but essential reading for anyone interested in the history—and the future—of America's cities.