A Global History: From Prehistory to the 21st Century (Fifth Edition)

This exploration of world history takes an interdisciplinary, global (rather than a regional or national) approach - tracing those major forces, movements, and events that had a world-wide impact. Surveying a full sweep of world history, the sixth edition provides a balanced coverage of both Eastern and Western regions, from earliest man to the present day. It combines all the information contained in "The World to 1500" and "The World Since 1500", but includes new material on the following: the earliest humans, Africa, European expansion in the age of discovery plus comparative data on Russian expansion, information on plant and animal diffusion in the modern world, and new information on the Portuguese slave trade. In particular this new edition connects the past, present and future and the combination of resulting patterns, drawing implications for the future should those patterns emerge once again.