The Essential World History

Part I: THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS AND THE RISE OF EMPIRES (PREHISTORY TO 500 C.E.).
1. Early Humans and the First Civilizations.
2. Ancient India.
3. China in Antiquity.
4. The Civilization of the Greeks.
5. The Roman World Empire.

Part II: NEW PATTERNS OF CIVILIZATION (500 ' 1500 C.E.).
6. The Americas.
7. Ferment in the Middle East: The Rise of Islam.
8. Early Civilizations in Africa.
9. The Expansion of Civilization in South and Southeast Asia.
10. The Flowering of Traditional China.
11. The East Asian Rimlands: Early Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.
12. The Making of Europe.
13. The Byzantine Empire and Crisis and Recovery in the West.

Part III: THE EMERGENCE OF NEW WORLD PATTERNS (1500 ' 1800).
14. New Encounters: The Creation of a World Market.
15. Europe Transformed: Reform and State Building.
16. The Muslim Empires.
17. The East Asian World.
18. The West on the Eve of a New World Order.

Part IV: MODERN PATTERNS OF WORLD HISTORY (1800 ' 1945).
19. The Beginnings of Modernization: Industrialization and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century.
20. The Americas and Society and Culture in the West.
21. The High Tide of Imperialism.
22. Shadows over the Pacific: East Asia Under Challenge.
23. The Beginning of the Twentieth-Century Crisis: War and Revolution.
24. Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship: Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America from 1919 to 1939.
25. The Crisis Deepens: World War II.

Part V: TOWARD A GLOBAL CIVILIZATION? THE WORLD SINCE 1945.
26. East and West in the Grip of the Cold War.
27. Brave New World: Communism on Trial.
28. Europe and the Western Hemisphere Since 1945.
29. Challenges of Nation Building in Africa and the Middle East.
30. Toward the Pacific Century?
Epilogue.