Traditions & Encounters, Volume 1 From the Beginning to 1500

Connect students to the stories of history. Connect students to the experience of history. Connect students to success in history.

At McGraw-Hill, we have dedicated the past few years to deepening our understanding of student and instructor experience. Employing a wide array of research tools including surveys, focus groups, and ethnographic studies, we've identified areas in need of improvement to provide an opportunity for greater learning and teaching experiences. The fifth edition of Traditions & Encounters is a result of this.

Traditions & Encounters also has a rich history of firsts: the first world history text to take a truly global perspective on the past; the first to emphasize connections among cultures; the first to combine twin themes with a seven-part framework, making the huge story of world history more manageable to both teach and learn.

Now Traditions & Encounters becomes the first truly interactive world history program: one that marries groundbreaking adaptive diagnostics and interactivities with a captivating narrative and engaging visuals, creating a unique learning environment that propels greater student success and better course results. Instructors gain insight into students' engagement and understanding as students develop a base of knowledge and construct critical thinking skills. Chapter-opening vignettes and a lively narrative keep students turning the page while the adaptive questioning for each chapter and the personalized study plan for each individual student help students prepare for class discussions and course work.

With its hallmark of twin themes, Traditions & Encounters continues to tell the story of the cultures and interactions that have shaped world history, while adding redesigned maps, new primary sources, and new chapter- and part-level features that strengthen connections and prompt students to analyze the events and themes in order to build a greater understanding of the past and an appreciation of history's influence on the present. Students are no longer simply reading; they are reading, interacting, and engaging in a visual, auditory, and hands-on learning experience.

Give students an experience. Improve course participation and performance. Experience Traditions & Encounters, and experience success.

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.

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.