The Human Venture: The Great Enterprise: A World History to 1500

This attempt at a history of the world aims at global perspective and breadth of coverage, as any world history should. It also seeks to personalize the past by giving people the place they deserve in it. Above all, it attempts to tell history like it is-as a story going somewhere. Global perspective means, in the first instance, a book that is not Western- or Europe-centered-not a history of Western civilization with chapters on "other cultures" pasted in here and there. This world history also tries not to be Eurasian-centered, by giving due attention to the emergence of civilizations in Africa and the Americas as well. All continents do not get equal coverage, but the goal was to start from the pole and follow history where it led. Breadth of coverage here means more than geographical sweep, however. It means going beyond the frontiers of all historic civilizations to spend some time at least with preurban peoples, from Eurasian steppe nomads to Australian Aborigines. It means concern with the female half of humankind, both in terms of outstanding individuals and the broad social roles played by women over the centuries. It means a special focus on "high culture"-the art and ideas of each age and people-since ideas constitute our most enduring legacy from the global past. The humanizing of history seems to the author no more than its due. A history that is entirely given over to trends and movements, classes, institutions, statistics, and other abstractions is, for many readers, no history at all. Writing human beings back into global history would seem to be of particular importance, given the abstract quality the rest of the world already has for most of us. By illuminating the Chinese, Indian, or African past with the characters and deeds of Huang-ti, Asoka, Mansa Musa, Buddha, and Confucius (their Washingtons, Napoleons, and Christs) we may recapture the pasts of other peoples.