A Concise History of the World

This book tells the story of humankind as producers and reproducers from the Paleolithic to the present. Renowned social and cultural historian Merry Wiesner-Hanks brings a new perspective to world history by examining social and cultural developments across the globe, including families and kin groups, social and gender hierarchies, sexuality, race and ethnicity, labor, religion, consumption, and material culture. She examines how these structures and activities changed over time through local processes and interactions with other cultures, highlighting key developments that defined particular eras such as the growth of cities or the creation of a global trading network. Incorporating foragers, farmers and factory workers along with shamans, scribes and secretaries, the book widens and lengthens human history. It makes comparisons and generalizations, but also notes diversities and particularities, as it examines the social and cultural matters that are at the heart of big questions in world history today.

Author: Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 09/23/2015
Pages: 405
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.65lbs
Size: 8.83h x 5.59w x 1.02d
ISBN: 9781107028371

Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2016

About the Author
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E.: - Merry Wiesner-Hanks is a Distinguished Professor and Chair of the History Department at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She is the long-time senior editor of the Sixteenth Century Journal, one of three editors of the Journal of Global History, and the editor-in-chief of the forthcoming multi-volume Cambridge World History. She is the author or editor of twenty books and many articles that have appeared in English, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, French, Chinese, Turkish and Korean. These include Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789, 2nd edition (Cambridge, 2013), Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 3rd edition (Cambridge, 2008), Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice, 2nd edition (2010) and Gender in History: Global Perspectives, 2nd edition (2010). Her research has been supported by grants from the Fulbright and Guggenheim Foundations, among others. She has also written a number of innovative source books for use in the college classroom, including Discovering the Global Past: A Look at the Evidence, 4th edition (2011), a book for young adults, An Age of Voyages, 1350-1600 (2005), and a book for general readers, The Marvelous Hairy Girls: The Gonzales Sisters and their Worlds (2009).