Western Civilizations and Perspectives from the Past

The most pedagogically innovative brief text―now connecting western civilizations to broader global contexts and students’ own experiences.

Western Civilizations―written by two expert teachers―is the most pedagogically innovative text for the survey course. A carefully crafted text and media program empower students to master core content, engage in historical analysis, and think critically, and the Brief Fourth Edition has been substantially updated with the latest scholarship that connects the West to global contexts, as well as new “Past and Present” features that connect historical themes to contemporary topics.

Perspectives from the Past: Primary Sources in Western Civilizations features a diverse range of primary sources for analysis, offering a total of 225 classic and contemporary documents of varying length. The Sixth Edition’s table of contents has been reorganized to mirror Western Civilizations’ chronology and emphasis on the global context for the West―a revision process overseen by Joshua Cole and Carol Symes, our dynamic co-authors of Western Civilizations, Full and Brief Editions. Selections are largely informed by instructor feedback, reflecting the documents most widely assigned in the course and rendering Perspectives from the Past the most extensive and diverse reader available.