Product Description Designed for introductory-level survey courses in World History. The primary goal of World Civilizations is to present a truly global history—from the development of agriculture and herding to the present. Using a unique periodization, this book divides the main periods of human history according to changes in the nature and extent of global contacts. This global world history text emphasizes the major stages in the interactions among different peoples and societies, while at the same time assessing the development of major societies. Encompassing social and cultural as well as political and economic history, the book examines key civilizations in world history. World Civilizations balances this discussion of independent developments in the world's major civilizations with comparative analysis of the results of global contact. About the Author Peter N. StearnsPeter N. Stearns is provost and professor of historyat George Mason University. He received his Ph.D.from Harvard University. Before moving to GeorgeMason University, he taught at Rutgers University,the University of Chicago, and Carnegie Mellon,where he won the Robert Doherty EducationalLeadership Award and the Elliott Dunlap Smith Teaching Award. He hastaught world history for more than 15 years. He currently serves as chairof the Advanced Placement World History Committee and also foundedand is the editor of the Journal of Social History. In addition to textbooksand readers, he has written studies of gender and consumerism in a worldhistory context. Other books address modern social and cultural historyand include studies on gender, old age, work, dieting, and emotion. Hismost recent book in this area is American Fear: Causes and Consequencesof High Anxiety. Michael AdasMichael Adas is the Abraham Voorhees Professor ofHistory and a board of governor’s chair at RutgersUniversity in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Over thepast couple of decades his teaching has focused onpatterns and processes of global and comparativehistory. His courses on race and empire in the earlymodern and industrial eras and on world history in the 20th century haveearned him a number of teaching prizes. In addition to texts on worldhistory, Adas has written mainly on the comparative history of colonialismand its impact on the peoples and societies of Asia and Africa. Hisbooks include Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, andIdeologies of Western Dominance, which won the Dexter Prize, and the recentlypublished Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives andAmerica’s Civilizing Mission. He is currently writing a global history of theFirst World War. Stuart B. SchwartzStuart B. Schwartz was born and educated in Springfield,Massachusetts, and then attended MiddleburyCollege and the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico.He has an M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia Universityin Latin American history. He taught for manyyears at the University of Minnesota and joined thefaculty at Yale University in 1996. He has also taught in Brazil, PuertoRico, Spain, France, and Portugal. He is a specialist on the history of colonialLatin America, especially Brazil, and is the author of numerousbooks, notably Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society(1985), which won the Bolton Prize for the best book in Latin AmericanHistory. He is also the author of Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels (1992), EarlyLatin America(1983), and Victors and Vanquished (1999). He has held fellowshipsfrom the Guggenheim Foundation and the Institute for AdvancedStudy (Princeton). For his work on Brazil he was recentlydecorated by the Brazilian government. He continues to read widely inthe history and anthropology of Latin America, Africa, and early modernEurope. Marc Jason GilbertMarc Jason Gilbert is the holder of an NEHsupportedChair in World History at Hawaii PacificUniversity in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a former UniversitySystem of Georgia Distinguished Professor ofTeaching and Learning. He rec