Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past, Vol. 1 From the Beginning to 1500

Over a million students at thousands of schools have learned about world history with the best selling book for the course, Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. Using the twin themes of traditions and encounters, the text emphasizes both the distinctive patterns of historical development within individual societies and the profound results of interactions between different societies. Exploring the historical record of cross-cultural interactions and exchanges, Traditions and Encounters places the world of contemporary globalization in historical context. The book helps students understand the world's major societies and shows how the interactions of these societies affect history throughout the world. The authors tell a coherent and digestible story of the past that is not weighed down by excessive detail, so instructors are able to incorporate additional readings. This edition provides an updated map program as well as the latest scholarship. It also moves Primary Source Investigator online, improving access for students to work with primary sources.

Jerry H. Bentley was professor of history at the University of Hawai‘i and editor of the

Journal of World History. His research on the religious, moral, and political writings of

Renaissance humanists led to the publication of Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament

Scholarship in the Renaissance (Princeton, 1983) and Politics and Culture in Renaissance

Naples (Princeton, 1987). More recently, his research was concentrated on global history

and particularly on processes of cross-cultural interaction. His book Old World Encounters:

Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (New York, 1993) examines

processes of cultural exchange and religious conversion before the modern era, and his pamphlet

Shapes of World History in Twentieth-Century Scholarship (Washington, D.C., 1996)

discusses the historiography of world history. His most recent publication is The Oxford

Handbook of World History (Oxford, 2011), and he served as a member of the editorial team

preparing the forthcoming Cambridge History of the World. Jerry Bentley passed away in

July 2012.

Herbert F. Ziegler is an associate professor of history at the University of Hawai'i. He has taught world history since 1980 and currently serves as director of the world history program at the University of Hawai'i. He also serves as book review editor of the Journal of World History. His interest in twentieth-century European social and political history led to the publication of Nazi Germany's New Aristocracy(1990). He is at present working on a study that explores from a global point of view the demographic trends of the past ten thousand years, along with their concomitant technological, economic, and social developments. His other current research project focuses on the application of complexity theory to a comparative study of societies and their internal dynamics.