"The Ancient World" (Paleolithic Age—500 B.C.) covers the period from the dark prehistory of the Paleolithic Age to the development of the earliest centers of civilization in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley. The lives of hunter-gatherers, the agricultural revolution, and the rise of the world's first cities are all vividly depicted in this richly illustrated text. Challenging map exercises and provocative review questions encourage meaningful reflection and historical analysis. Tests and answer keys are included.

A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own. This is the first volume in a bold series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history. Dozens of maps provide a clear geography of great events, while timelines give the reader an ongoing sense of the passage of years and cultural interconnection. This old-fashioned narrative history employs the methods of “history from beneath”—literature, epic traditions, private letters and accounts—to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled. The result is an engrossing tapestry of human behavior from which we may draw conclusions about the direction of world events and the causes behind them.

Read Along or Enhanced eBook: Introduce readers to some of the most well-known criminals and tyrants of the past with this fascinating nonfiction book! Featuring intriguing facts and theories, colorful images, and informational text in conjunction with a glossary of terms, a bibliography, and a list of helpful websites with more information, readers will want to learn all they can about ancient history and the bad guys and gals from the past.

"The Greeks" (1000 B.C.—300 B.C.) provides an overview of Greek civilization from its origins in ancient Minoan and Mycenaean culture through the Golden Age of Athens and the rise of Alexander the Great. Special emphasis is given to the sociology of life in Ancient Greece—the lives of ordinary women, children, families, and soldiers—as well as to the great political, cultural, and intellectual achievements which shaped the course of the Western world. The birth of democracy, science, philosophy, poetry, and drama are among the events vividly depicted in this richly illustrated text. Challenging map exercises and provocative review questions encourage meaningful reflection and historical analysis. Tests and answer keys are included.

In a moonlit graveyard somewhere in southern Italy, a soldier removes his clothes in readiness to transform himself into a wolf. He depends upon the clothes to recover his human shape, and so he magically turns them to stone, but his secret is revealed when, back in human form, he is seen to carry a wound identical to that recently dealt to a marauding wolf. In Arcadia a man named Damarchus accidentally tastes the flesh of a human sacrifice and is transformed into a wolf for nine years. At Temesa Polites is stoned to death for raping a local girl, only to return to terrorize the people of the city in the form of a demon in a wolfskin. Tales of the werewolf are by now well established as a rich sub-strand of the popular horror genre; less widely known is just how far back in time their provenance lies. These are just some of the werewolf tales that survive from the Graeco-Roman world, and this is the first book in any language to be devoted to their study. It shows how in antiquity werewolves thrived in a story-world shared by witches, ghosts, demons, and soul-flyers, and argues for the primary role of story-telling-as opposed to rites of passage-in the ancient world's general conceptualization of the werewolf. It also seeks to demonstrate how the comparison of equally intriguing medieval tales can be used to fill in gaps in our knowledge of werewolf stories in the ancient world, thereby shedding new light on the origins of the modern phenomenon. All ancient texts bearing upon the subject have been integrated into the discussion in new English translations, so that the book provides not only an accessible overview for a broad readership of all levels of familiarity with ancient languages, but also a comprehensive sourcebook for the ancient werewolf for the purposes of research and study.

A history of the ancient world, from 6000 B.C. to 400 A.D.

(1945. . .) The Modern World covers the period from the end of World War II to the present. The rebuilding of postwar Europe, the advent of the Cold War, space exploration, the collapse of Soviet communism, and the explosion of advanced technologies in the late 20th century figure prominently in this volume. Also discussed are the contributions and influence of historic personalities such as Mahatma Gandhi, Nikita Khrushchev, Mikhail Gorbachev, and American presidents from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton. Challenging map exercises and provocative review questions encourage meaningful reflection and historical analysis.

Ancient history has traditionally focused on Greece and Rome. This book takes a global approach to the distant past, following the development of human societies across the globe from the last Ice Age, 11,700 years ago, to the rise of Islam in the seventh century CE. The only book of its kind, A Global History of the Ancient World provides succinct narratives of the first Asian, African and European civilizations and their importance for later history without foregoing the key topics of conventional textbooks. Thematic overviews give truly global perspectives on connections, disconnections and parallel developments shaping the ancient world. Written for students of history, classics and related disciplines, the book will appeal to anyone interested in widening their view of early history.

This book provides a detailed and richly illustrated overview of the lives of the first Americans from their earliest migrations over the Bering land bridge to their initial encounters with European explorers. It traces the settlement of these early nomadic peoples across North America—the evolution of tools, the establishment of agriculture, and the rise of elaborate regional cultures. Styles of shelter, modes of travel and transport, and the prevalence of art and ornamentation suggest remarkable creativity and human ingenuity. Tribal beliefs, habits, practices, and unique structures of various tribal societies are discussed. The last third of the book documents European "discovery" of the New World, the often brutal rivalries among European colonizers, and the savage treatment of native peoples. Challenging review questions encourage meaningful reflection and historical analysis. Maps, tests, answer key, extensive bibliography, and bonus timeline are included.

This lavishly illustrated full-color set is organized by the time frames that mirror the National Standards for world history for grades 6-12. An ideal supplement to all the major textbooks, it offers appealing and comprehensive biographies of history's most influential figures - both famous and infamous."Lifelines in World History" features biographies of figures from Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and Southwest Asia, and covers the most significant events and trends in world history. Each volume includes 15-20 biographies, and in addition to biographical information, each entry includes engaging sidebars that feature key dates, more people to know, words from their time, and cultural connections. The set also includes numerous full-color maps.