The Essential World History

William J. Duiker is liberal arts Professor Emeritus of East Asian studies at The Pennsylvania State University and a former U.S. diplomat with service in Taiwan, South Vietnam and Washington, D.C. At Penn State, he served as director of International Programs in the College of Liberal Arts and as chairman of the East Asian Studies Committee. He has written extensively on the history of Vietnam and modern China, including the highly acclaimed COMMUNIST ROAD TO POWER IN VIETNAM (revised edition, Westview Press, 1996), which was selected for a Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award in 1982-1983 and 1996-1997. He is also the author of CHINA AND VIETNAM: THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT (Berkeley, 1987), U.S. CONTAINMENT POLICY AND THE CONFLICT IN INDOCHINA (Stanford, 1995), SACRED WAR: NATIONALISM AND REVOLUTION IN A DIVIDED VIETNAM (McGraw-Hill, 1995) and HO CHI MINH (Hyperion, 2000), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2001. While Dr. Duiker's research specialization is in the field of nationalism and Asian revolutions, his intellectual interests are considerably more diverse. He has traveled widely and has taught courses on the history of communism and non-Western civilizations at Penn State, where he was awarded a Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in 1996. The College of Liberal Arts honored him with an Emeritus Distinction Award in 2002. Dr. Duiker received his doctorate in Far Eastern history from Georgetown University. Jackson J. Spielvogel is Associate Professor Emeritus of History at The Pennsylvania State University. He received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University, where he specialized in Reformation History under Harold J. Grimm. His articles and reviews have appeared in journals such as Moreana, Journal of General Education, Catholic Historical Review, Archiv Für Reformationsgeschichte and America Historical Review. He also has contributed chapters or articles to THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF REFORMATION, THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE: A DICTIONARY HANDBOOK, THE SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER ANNUAL OF HOLOCAUST STUDIES and UTOPIAN STUDIES. His work has been supported by fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation and the Foundation for Reformation Research. At Penn State, he helped inaugurate the Western Civilization course as well as a popular course on Nazi Germany. His book, HITLER AND NAZI GERMANY, was first published in 1987 (8th Edition, 2020). In addition, he is the author of WESTERN CIVILIZATION, first published in 1991 (11th Edition, 2021) and co-author (with William Duiker) of WORLD HISTORY, first published in 1994 (9th Edition, 2019). Professor Spielvogel has won five major university-wide teaching awards. During the 1988–1989 year, he held the Penn State Teaching Fellowship, the university's most prestigious teaching award. He won the Dean Arthur Ray Warnock Award for Outstanding Faculty member in 1996 and received the Schreyer Honors College Excellence in Teaching Award in 2000.

• Part I: THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS AND THE RISE OF EMPIRES (PREHISTORY TO 500 C.E.).1. Early Humans and the First Civilizations.2. Ancient India.3. China in Antiquity.4. The Civilization of the Greeks.5. The Roman World Empire.Part II: NEW PATTERNS OF CIVILIZATION (500 – 1500 C.E.).6. The Americas.7. Ferment in the Middle East: The Rise of Islam.8. Early Civilizations in Africa.9. The Expansion of Civilization in South and Southeast Asia.10. The Flowering of Traditional China.11. The East Asian Rimlands: Early Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.12. The Making of Europe.13. The Byzantine Empire and Crisis and Recovery in the West.Part III: THE EMERGENCE OF NEW WORLD PATTERNS (1500 – 1800).14. New Encounters: The Creation of a World Market.15. Europe Transformed: Reform and State Building.16. The Muslim Empires.17. The East Asian World.18. The West on the Eve of a New World Order.Part IV: MODERN PATTERNS OF WORLD HISTORY (1800 – 1945).19. The Beginnings of Modernization: Industrialization and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century.20. The Americas and Society and Culture in the West.21. The High Tide of Imperialism.22. Shadows over the Pacific: East Asia Under Challenge.23. The Beginning of the Twentieth-Century Crisis: War and Revolution.24. Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship: Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America from 1919 to 1939.25. The Crisis Deepens: World War II.Part V: TOWARD A GLOBAL CIVILIZATION? THE WORLD SINCE 1945.26. East and West in the Grip of the Cold War.27. Brave New World: Communism on Trial.28. Europe and the Western Hemisphere Since 1945.29. Challenges of Nation Building in Africa and the Middle East.30. Toward the Pacific Century?Epilogue.