Noted teachers and scholars William J. Duiker and Jackson J. Spielvogel present a brief, balanced, highly readable overview of world history that explores common challenges and experiences that unite the human past and that identify key regional patterns over time. The text adopts a balanced approach to world history, with some chapters focusing on specific geographical regions and others taking a comparative or thematic approach, in deference to the increasing interconnection that marks developments in the world today. This approach helps students to link events together in a broad comparative and global framework, thereby placing the contemporary world in a more meaningful historical context. Available in the following split options: THE ESSENTIAL WORLD HISTORY, Eighth Edition Complete, Volume I: To 1800, and Volume II: Since 1500.
