Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World from the Beginnings of Humankind to the Present

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Worlds Together, Worlds Apart provides a fantastic account of world history that, while not leaving out many important details, looks past the facts and avoids the all too common Euro-centric view of world history. Instead of merely recounting the facts of world history, region by region, in chronological order, Tignor takes a much different approach. The text examines each region of the world in detail, but it also discusses the relations between various civilizations. The relations between nations the text discusses vary from actual interactions between cultures to comparisons of simultaneous but independent developments in different regions in the world. To facilitate a more global approach to world history, the text is not ordered chronologically or by region. Rather, it is organized thematically. Each chapter explores a major theme (politics, culture, social structure, etc) in history and its development in (and among) the various civilizations of the world. As a result, Rome and Han China appear in the same chapter, while the politics of the 17th and 18th centuries and the culture of the same time period appear in different chapters. This structure is certainly a departure from the norm, but it allows for the authors to discuss global developments, trends, and interactions uninhibited by the constraints of a traditional history text's structure. Unfortunately, the density of information forces the readability of the prose to suffer a bit in some parts, but the content of this text far surpasses that of any other world history text.

I am not usually excited about textbooks, especially history ones, but I found this book:Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the Modern World, very entertaining and useful.

I've used several different modern world history texts in my courses, and this is not only the one that I like best, but according to student course evaluations it is the one that my students at 3 different universities have liked the best. It does a great job of connecting the dots between different civilizations and showing the relationships among them, unlike the standard text that simply throws all the different civilizations into separate sections. It also is truly global, whereas too many texts are simply Western Civ. texts that add a few "non-western" chapters. After reading some dozen modern World History books I'm convinced that this one is not only the best, but is head and shoulders above its competitors. I will admit, though, that in my experience the 2.0 student hasn't liked this book as well as the 2.8-4.0 student. But to be fair, that was also true of other books I assigned in the past (Bulliet, Palmer, Kishlansky, etc.)

Unlike the previous reviewers I found Tignor's text to be a highly lucid and comprehensive account of world history. If you have not read much history than you will have to be patient at first with the writing style as it is chock full of information and concepts that can seem disconnected an quite abstract. Yet, if you have the perseverance to stick with it, you be rewarded with a rich understanding of the themes that run through the narrative of human history. Strongly recommended.