World History: The Basics

World History is not, as its title might imply, a history of the world. Part of a large series whose coverage ranges from human genetics to folk music, it sets out to describe what world history is, how it may best be studied, and why it is a controversial subject. To take the last first, although there have been previous attempts to study the world's historic civilizations in a comparative perspective (notably that of Arnold Toynbee) the author explains that the subject gained an important place in the US curriculum only about thirty years ago, when it was feared that...