The Greeks in a Dark Age C. This free and easy-to-use website offers you access to an online reader which houses primary source documents and images for each chapter in the book. The most pedagogically innovative brief text? Western Civilizations? One-Volume pdf One-Volume pdf The food-to-waste-to-food cycle is how our ecosystems operate, with the Sun s energy adding the needed boost. Please click button to get western civilization a brief history book now.
Best-selling author Jackson Spielvogel helped over one million students learn about the present by exploring the past. The organizational structure is built on a chronological narrative that would make taking chapters out of order somewhat nonsensical. That being said, if an instructor was teaching a version of the course where certain topics were not included or that extended beyond the end of the text, it would be fairly easy to take chapters out or add some from the next volume to achieve the desired coverage.
At the chapter level, more subheadings would be helpful. The sequencing is logical and consistent with other introductory texts in the field, though occasionally the flow within a section is a bit disrupted. For instance, in the section on Egypt, the political chronology of the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom is divorced from the discussion of continuity mostly cultural that follows in a way that some historians might find less than optimal.
The selection of maps and photographs is well chosen to illustrate the chapters, though a few more illustrations would be welcome. While these maps and photos are clearly labeled, citation of sources for each item clearly visible in the descriptive text with the titles would be welcome. Right now the citation list appears at the end of each chapter which makes it less integral and less visible to students who need to learn about proper citation both in OER and for other formats.
Providing some statistical or data visualization items could expand the usefulness of the text for explaining to students the different methods of historical analysis available to historians. Within the confines of the topic of Western Civilization, which is necessarily focused on Western Europe, this text appears to be mostly inclusive. The author makes a clear statement in the introduction that he has expanded coverage of areas that interacted with and influenced Europe, as well as looking in later volumes at the impact both positive and negative European expansion had upon the world in a larger sense.
He also states that he has attempted to expand his coverage of women in history, though this is still in a somewhat imperfect state given the brevity of the text and the focus on mostly political and intellectual history. See the sections on Rome for an example of this, where scholarship has revealed more about women and gender in Roman society, but the text here has only limited coverage of this kind of information. The chapters covered in this first volume are well-organized and the major topics are addressed but sometimes without sufficient space more in "Consistency" section.
I was especially happy to the ancient world given several chapters instead of I was especially happy to the ancient world given several chapters instead of just chapters as many books do. Since the book is apparently marketed in three parts, I think it's important to provide an index for each part. Certain institutions or programs may use only volume 1, for example, and there is no index for it. Most sections I found to be accurate but there were a few errors, some more troubling than others.
Jews, Christians, and Muslims do not worship the same god as the Introduction claims. There are substantial differences -- Trinitarian God vs.
Allah is One, Deity of Christ, etc. If the intent was to inform students that the three 3 largest monotheistic faiths have much in common due to their Abrahamic heritage, then that needs to be said. Claiming they all worship the same god is a gross simplification and requires far too much "cleaning up" from the professor to my mind. Either this needs to be removed or given a fuller treatment with far more nuance.
The explanation regarding the Trinity is also a bit muddy and it felt like the author was not quite sure how to explain it. I also find using terms like "party line" to discuss a religious dogma to be in poor state and this risks giving students an overly politicized view of religion.
Of course, religion and politics mixed often in that time period, but again I thought nuance was lacking here. Overall the sections on religion need the most work. Another area that needs more nuance is the so-called "Dark Ages" and the long since worn out characterization of the Germanic tribes are barbarians. The author appears to be aware of this by continually putting it "barbarians" in quotes and then explaining it in one paragraph.
The term, however, should be replaced by the actual names of the tribes for their distinctions to be noted. They were not one homogenous group. There's no reason to perpetuate the Roman stereotype of them. Note it and move on to addressing them by name. A colleague of mine has read it as well and made some additional observations I'd like to highlight.
The sections involving Latin terms also need to be cleaned up a bit. Most Coloni were "veterani" or their descendants who were settled in conquered provinces to secure Roman power.
They kept the peace and were given land as incentive for military service. They were by definition free Roman citizens, in contrast to the rustici or nativi who were non-citizens and often suffered under early forms of serfdom.
A few topics deserve more treatment, in particular the time between the Arab Conquest and the Crusades. More should be said of the Carolingians, the Holy Roman Empire, etc. I think it's relevant and appears like it would be easy to update. I don't not say this as a criticism necessarily.
If anything, such a relationship makes updating even more streamlined. I will include these next remarks here because of the relationship to Wikipedia.
I considered placing them in the first section as well. I would greatly appreciate a section "For Further Reading" so that the reliance on Wiki would be mitigated a bit. See some of my comments above, but overall I think it is well-written for an early Undergraduate textbook.
I would like a bit more precision and nuance on certain topics some addressed above but the overall prose is lucid and accessible. I think this is written in a more readable prose for Freshman than the vast majority of textbooks. Terminology is fine so far as I could tell. I do think the framework needs to tweaked some see comments above about the time periods between the Arabic Conquest and the Crusades.
No issues here. The headings are intuitive and provide a generally fair amount of reading for each section. Easily digestible for undergrads. They are logical and clear other than the last chapter or two on Islam and the Early Middle Ages which feels rushed see comments above. It's inclusive. The section on women in Egypt was great to see but so short. Much more could said there and in other regions and times. See also my previous comments on religion. My other major concern is that there is a lack of primary source citations.
Many expensive texts include text-boxes or something similar to address this. Others include an entirely separate book. Considering cost, the latter is a bad option, of course. Good instructors will no doubt supplement this book with primary sources, but I would like to see more sources cited in the text to demonstrate how vibrant, exciting, and relevant history is. For example, when I discuss women in Egypt, I discuss letters from the worker's village at Deir el-Medina from two women to each other.
One essentially states she has nothing to wear for the social function that week, so she wants to borrow something from the letter recipient.
My students get a good laugh at that! More significantly, that conversation allows us to discuss literacy rates and gender. Did these women know how to write or have access to scribes somehow if not? Both options have interesting implications for their treatment in Egyptian society.
I say all this as one example how vital including primary sources is to make history come alive. The book is well-written but needs more of this for history to come alive, which I find is often an uphill battle in Civ classes, as many students come into the class after a poor experience with history class in high school IE, boring. Finally, I'd like to note that there is a good chance my department adopts this book.
It does a nice job overall. My comments above are made in hopes of improving it further. The text covers the main ideas and areas of the subject well. However, it lacks an index, glossary, and bibliography. The addition of a bibliography or at least some suggested readings connected with each chapter would be most helpful for The addition of a bibliography or at least some suggested readings connected with each chapter would be most helpful for undergraduates. The text is generally accurate.
However, some sections are stronger than others. The chapters on the Roman republic and empire are particularly strong and even handed. The chapter on Islam, however, glosses over key events such as the murder of Uthman and the events at Karbala which were crucial in the creation of the division between Sunnism and Shiism. There are also some minor factual oversights which could use editing - Abbasid era scholars did pioneering work in optics and refraction but did not develop telescopes; the letter which Pope Gregory sent to missionaries in Anglo-Saxon England did not go to Bede but to Augustine of Canterbury; Solon was by all accounts an archon and not unlike Draco before him or Peisistratus afterwards a tyrant.
Of greater concern is that, on occasion, the author makes unnecessary polemical statements. The most egregious of these is his repeated assertion that many Western Civilization textbooks begin with Greece. Most widely used textbooks, however, begin with Mesopotamia and Egypt just as this one does, so this is misguided. This otherwise very useful text is also occasionally marred by diction which is overly informal.
A textbook such as this needs to both present material in an engaging fashion which this does and to offer students a strong example of scholarly prose. The book incorporates recent scholarship though its citation of it is uneven. Here again a bibliography of some sort would be most helpful. The text explains most technical terms very clearly and makes appropriate use of etymologies in its explanations.
Most of the book is well organized. It could use a bit of tightening up in a few areas, though. For example, it discusses the Mycenean Civilization in two different sections when it would be clearer to keep it all together.
This textbook clearly is the product of great effort and is generally well-organized and presented. As mentioned above, it could benefit from some minor editing for accuracy, diction and, on occasion, organizational clarity and would be improved by the inclusion of a bibliography or suggested reading list as well as an index.
It is a strong attempt to offer a survey of a broad period and would be of use particularly in the community college environment. It is available in three volumes covering the following time periods and topics:. Content Accuracy rating: 5 The text is accurate although because it is concise, does not include some of the finer detail on topics that an instructor may choose to clarify.
Clarity rating: 4 For my Freshman student population, accessible prose is important and I think this text does an excellent job of that.
Consistency rating: 4 Most chapters have a conclusion but not all. Modularity rating: 5 The text is broken down into logical modules that would be easy to teach as a stand alone lesson. Interface rating: 5 I experienced no interface issues. Grammatical Errors rating: 5 Overall grammar is correct. It is an informal writing style that I think my students will enjoy. Cultural Relevance rating: 4 I do not see the text as being culturally insensitive, at the same time there could be more information about how race and ethnicity played a role in history.
Comments I like the text and plan on using it in my classes. Content Accuracy rating: 5 Within the constraints listed above, the content is historically accurate and reflects current consensus of scholars in the field. Clarity rating: 4 This prose is adequately clear.
Coverage of women and minorities is integrated directly into the text, not relegated to sections at the ends of chapters. Compelling pictorial chapter openers entitled The Visual Record invite students to think critically about historical themes by considering their depiction in art, architecture, sculpture, and photography. A new Looking Ahead section at the end of each Visual Record connects the themes of the opener to the major topics and themes of the chapter.
Throughout each tour, specific references to the many four-color maps on the spread direct students to examine each map in detail. Selections from primary source documents stimulate student interest in history. Each source is accompanied by an explanatory headnote that provides the necessary historical context.
All primary source documents now contain "Focus Questions" to help students think critically about the source document. The timeline is arranged around important political and diplomatic, social and economic, and cultural and technological events in Western civilization.
New to This Edition. The new brief edition is approximately fifty pages shorter than the previous edition, providing thorough but brief coverage of Western civilization. Chapter headings have been reorganized and streamlined to guide students more clearly through the material.
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