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

Includes over three hundred primary sources. Provides a rich variety of selections including literature, eyewitness accounts, and public documents. Offers pieces that range in length from one to seven pages. Takes a Continental perspective that gives a wide view of history-incorporates documents from political, cultural, social, and economic history. Uses broad themes to make numerous connections within and across periods. Includes pedagogical aids: an introduction to reading documents, development of contextual foundation, headnotes; non-interpretive footnotes, and several review questions.

James M. Brophy is associate professor of modern European history at the University of Delaware. He received his B.A. from Vassar College and did his graduate training at the Universität Tübingen and Indiana University, where he specialized in the social and political history of nineteenth-century Europe. He is the author of Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads in Prussia, 1830—1870 (1998).

Joshua Cole (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley) is Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research focuses on gender and the history of population sciences, colonial violence, and the politics of memory in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France, Germany, and Algeria. His first book was The Power of Large Numbers: Population, Politics, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).

Steven Epstein teaches history at the University of Kansas. He was educated at Swarthmore College, St. John’s College (Cambridge University), and Harvard College, where he developed his interests in medieval social and economic history. He is the author of Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity, and Human Bondage in Italy (2000), Genoa and the Genoese 958—1528 (1996).


John Robertson received both his M.A. and his Ph.D. in ancient history from the University of Pennsylvania. A specialist in the social and economic history of the ancient Near East, Professor Robertson has published several articles in major scholarly journals and contributed articles to such major reference works as the recently published Civilizations of the Ancient Near East.


Thomas Max Safley is associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. A specialist in the economic and social history of early modern Europe, his particular research interests include the history of the Reformation, the family, charity, work, and business. In addition to numerous articles and reviews, Professor Safley is the author of Let No Man Put Asunder: The Control of Marriage in the German Southwest, 1550—1620 (1984) and Charity and Economy in the Orphanages of Early Modern Augsburg (1996).