Commentaries on the Sources for the History of Western Civilization With Questions for Students

This two-volume reader documents the history of the West, from the second millennium BC through the twentieth century. Drawing from the well known and the less obvious, Sources for the History of Western Civilization reflects the ongoing reassessment of the canonical texts of Western history. The volumes include generous selections of literature, letters, laws, records, biographical writings, and illustrations that collectively create a rich portrait of the West's intellectual, social, political, and material development.

Unlike other readers, Sources for the History of Western Civilization uses complete texts whenever feasible, including those of a number of longer works, such as The Symposium; Einhard's Life of Charlemagne and The Communist Manifesto. Women are well represented and Western Civilization is placed within world history by the inclusion of materials from the Near East, the Americas and Asia. The selections have been newly annotated and the translations have in many cases been modernized. The headnotes introducing each author's work leave room for readers to conduct their own analyses.

Please note that both Volume 1 and Volume 2 come with the 195-page book Commentaries for the instructor, which contains questions for students and advanced analyses on each reading's relationship to broader historical themes. The inclusion of Commentaries makes Sources for the History of Western Civilization ideal for large courses with sections taught by newer instructors.

Special Combined Price: Sources for the History of Western Civilization, Volume I may be ordered together with The Shaping of Western Civilization: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment at a special discounted price. In order to secure the package price, the following ISBN must be used when ordering: 978-1-55402-605-0.

Michael Burger is an historian of medieval Europe and the Dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Auburn University at Montgomery. He is the author of Bishops, Clerks, and Diocesan Governance in Thirteenth-Century England: Reward and Punishment (Cambridge University Press) and the editor of the two-volume reader Sources for the History of Western Civilization (University of Toronto Press).