An Accessible Vangobook™ That Focuses on the Connections Within and Between Societies
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judge_langdonKIT_press 7/18/08 11:56 AM Page 1 Preview Chapter 15 Inside! An accessible VangoBook™ that focuses on the connections within and between societies. judge_langdonKIT_press 7/15/08 11:34 AM Page 2 Spring 2008 Dear Colleague: We are two professors who love teaching world history. For the past sixteen years, at our middle-sized college, we have team-taught a two-semester world history course that first-year students take to fulfill a college-wide requirement. Our students have very diverse backgrounds and interests. Most take world history only because it is required, and many of them find it very challenging. Helping them understand world history and getting them to share our enthusiasm for it are our main purposes and passions. To help our students prepare better for class and enhance their enjoyment of history, we decided to write a world history text that was tailored specifically to meet their needs. Knowing that they often see history as a bewildering array of details, dates, and developments, we chose a unifying theme— connections—and grouped our chapters to reflect the expansion of connections from regional to global levels. To help make our text more accessible, we wrote concise chapters in a simple yet engaging narrative, divided into short topical subsections, with pronunciations after difficult names and marginal notes highlighting our theme. Having seen many students struggle because they lack a good sense of geography, we included numerous maps—more than twice as many as most other texts—and worked hard to make them clear and consistent, with captions that help the students read the maps and connect them with surrounding text.We also provided compelling vignettes to introduce the themes of each chapter, concise excerpts from relevant primary sources, colorful illustrations,“perspective” summaries and chronologies, reflection questions, and useful lists of key concepts, key people, and additional sources. We sought to supply both a regional and global perspective, so students can appreciate both the diversity and connectedness of human societies. Chapter 15, for example, discusses the Turks and Mongols, showing how they conquered and connected numerous diverse societies, spreading commerce, ideas, technologies, and diseases. For several years, we and some colleagues have used a draft version of our text, with highly encouraging results. Since chapters are concise and engaging, we find that students actually read them before coming to class and thus are better prepared to understand and discuss key issues. Students who completed questionnaires or wrote reviews of our chapters said they found them clear and compelling. By pointing out passages they found dry or confusing, these students also helped make the book more readable.We went to great lengths to create a text that is useful, accessible, and attractive to our students. For they, after all, are the reasons we wrote this book. Best regards, Ed Judge and John Langdon judge_langdonKIT_press 7/15/08 11:34 AM Page 3 Coming August 2008! CONNECTIONS A WORLD HISTORY Edward H. Judge / John W. Langdon both of Le Moyne College Combined Volume: ©2009 • 998 pages • Hardcover ISBN-13: 9780321107824 / ISBN-10: 0321107829 Volume One: ©2009 • 500 pages • Paperback ISBN-13: 9780321107961 / ISBN-10: 0321107969 Volume Two: ©2009 • 500 pages • Paperback ISBN-13: 9780321107978 / ISBN-10: 0321107977 Connections: A World History focuses on the connections within and between societies, combining a uniquely comprehensive and consistent map program with a strong pedagogical program and a narrative that students will actually read. This new survey text presents both a global and regional perspective, so students can appreciate both the diversity and connectedness of human societies. Concise chapters in an engaging narrative make the text accessible to a range of students. Because many students struggle with geography, the book includes significantly more maps than other texts—in most cases, twice as many—and great care was taken to make the maps consistent and exceptionally clear. In each caption, the authors have provided guidance for reading the map and for connecting it to the surrounding text. To further help students succeed, marginal notes highlight major connections for easy review, and pronunciation guides appear after difficult names. Compelling vignettes introduce the themes of each chapter, and concise excerpts from relevant primary sources allow students to hear the voices of the past. An extensive chapter review section is designed to help students test themselves and succeed in this difficult course. “The maps are vivid. They show connections and trace “The authors answered WHY societies routes in a direct contextual connected, needed to connect, or line with the text. They serve wanted to connect, rather than just as an ancillary for the text, demonstrate that they did. Answering not as a distraction.” why is important to adult learners.” ~ John H. Frederick, ~ Joel McMahon, Georgia Perimeter College South Louisiana Community College judge_langdonKIT_press 7/15/08 11:34 AM Page 4 FEATURE WALK-THROUGH UNIQUE, EXTENSIVE MAP PROGRAM Recognizing that many students struggle with geography, the authors have created a map program that is exceptional in its clarity and consistency. With twice as many maps as most competitors, the map program in Connections: Clearly positions chapter events in a global context. Each chapter opener contains a global map that highlights the parts of the world under discussion in the chapter so students can more easily situate events, especially across chapters. “I think this map program is unique. The progression of maps within the chapter is incredibly well thought out and integrated. The maps are beautifully and carefully done and the number of maps included in each chapter is far more than in a typical World History textbook.” ~ Linda Scherr, Mercer Community College Treats geographical areas consistently throughout each chapter. The first map in every chapter sets the stage for all of the others in the chapter so that students will always be able to situate themselves in any map by referring to the first one. “Perfect maps! Every map is professionally done and confirms the arguments in each section.” ~ Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, Pace University Provides captions that direct “I particularly like the student attention to important explanations and questions in the map elements. Map captions are written captions. They can help not only to help students understand students to examine the what they are looking at but to guide maps more closely and their attention to the most important gain meaning from elements as well. them.” ~ Lisa M. Edwards, University of Massachusetts– Lowell judge_langdonKIT_press 7/15/08 11:34 AM Page 5 SUPERIOR TOOLS FOR STUDENTS Marginal notes. Throughout the text, marginal notes call out connections—within regions and across regions—so students see the impact of interactions throughout history. “The margin notes do seem to point out major points within the text... I found [them] to be very complimentary of the text they accompany.” ~ Mark Gunn, Meridian Community College Documents. Each chapter contains a short document that speaks to the theme of the chapter, allowing students to hear the voices of the time and place they are studying. “The ideas and examples are very clear and do an excellent job of explaining the broader significance of the material.” ~ Denise Davidson, Georgia State University Study Aids. At the end of each chapter are a series of study aids to help students succeed in the course. “The material through- out this text far exceeds our current text, as does the end of chapter unit. My only suggestion is that you SPEED UP publication so that we can adopt this book!” ~ Connie Brand, Meridian Community College judge_langdonKIT_press 7/15/08 11:34 AM Page 6 PLEASE NOTE: Contents prepared in advance of publication. CONTENTS Additional changes may appear in the published book PART 1: EMERGENCE AND 7. CLASSICAL GREECE AND The Islamic Impact on India EXPANSION OF REGIONAL ITS CONFLICT WITH ASIA, India’s Influence on Southeast Asia SOCIETIES, TO 300 C.E. 2000-30 B.C.E. 13. AFRICAN SOCIETIES AND 1. THE EMERGENCE OF HUMAN Early Greece THE IMPACT OF ISLAM, SOCIETIES, TO 3000 B.C.E. Archaic Greece, 750-500 B.C.E. 1500 B.C.E.–1500 C.E. Our Earliest Ancestors Classical Greece, 500-338 B.C.E. Africa Before Islam The Origins and Impact of Agriculture The Arts and Philosophy in Classical Greece Islamic Africa and Spain: Commercial The Emergence of Complex Societies Classical Greek Society and Religion and Cultural Networks The Empire of Alexander the Great 2. EARLY SOCIETIES OF WEST ASIA Trade Across the Sahara Connections and Conflict in the West African Kingdoms: Ghana and Mali AND NORTH AFRICA, TO 500 B.C.E. Hellenistic World Early West Asian Societies Ethiopia’s Christian Kingdom Early Northeast African Societies 8. THE ROMANS CONNECT The City-States of Eastern Africa West Asia and North Africa: THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD, The Bantu Connection: Central and Southern The Phoenician Connection 753 B.C.E.-284 C.E. Africa The Israelites and Their God The Roman Republic to 133 B.C.E. 14. THE EVOLUTION AND Dissatisfaction with the Republic EXPANSION OF EAST ASIAN 3. SOCIETIES AND BELIEFS OF The Birth of the Roman Empire EARLY INDIA,TO 300 C.E. SOCIETIES, 220-1279 C.E. Roman Religion and the Rise of Christianity China’s Age of Disunity, 220-589 C.E. The Indian Subcontinent From Golden Age to Disarray Harappan India: Early Indus Valley China’s Age of Preeminence, 589-1279 C.E. Societies PART 2: TRANS-REGIONAL Highlights and Hallmarks of Chinese Society Vedic India: The Aryan Impact CONFLICTS AND RELIGIOUS Vietnam and the Chinese Impact The Religions of India CONNECTIONS, 200-1200 C.E. Korea and the Chinese Impact Post-Vedic India: Connections and Divisions 9.