Perspectives from the Past: Primary Sources in Western Civilizations : From the Ancient Near East Through the Age of Absolutism

From the ancient near east to contemporary times, Perspectives from the Past offers a rich variety of sources both familiar and fresh. The reader contains excerpts from classic texts by Plato, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Descartes, Marx, and Mill and includes substantive representation of women writers, such as Anna Comnena, Hildegard of Bingen, Madame Roland, Flora Tristan, Emmeline Pankurst, Vera Brittain, and Elizabeth Robbins.

Perspectives from the Past offers a wide selection of readings from all regions of Europe, including Venetian ambassadors' reports; excerpts from Mickiewic's Books of a Polish Nation and Its Pilgrimage; Czar Alexander II's Edict of Emancipation of 1861 freeing the serfs; the Constitution of the Black Hand, the Serbian nationalist group instrumental in the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand; and In Search of Splendor, Constance de la Mora's account of the Spanish Civil War.

Also included are non-European writers whose works have made an impact on Western thought, among them Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Battutah, Luiz Vaz de Camoes, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, and Mahatma Gandhi.

James Brophey is associate professor of modern European history at the University of Delaware. Steven Epstein teaches history at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Cat Nilan earned a graduate degree in French Studies and a Ph.D. in Western European history at Yale University and holds an M.A. in women's history from Sarah Lawrence College. John Robertson is a member of the faculty of the department of history at Central Michigan University, where he has taught the history of Western civilizations for both the department of history and the university honors program, as well as more specialized courses in the history of the ancient Near East and the Islamic and modern Middle East. Thomas Max Safley is associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania.