Michael Adas is Abraham E. Voorhees Professor of History and Board of Governor's Chair, Rutgers University at New Brunswick. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Machines as the Measure of Men, which won the Dexter prize in 1991, and more recently Dominance by Design. He is the co-author (with Peter Stearns and Stuart Schwartz), of World Civilizations: The Global Experience, which is now in its sixth edition.

"This collection of essays is part of a larger attempt to overturn the problematic periodization of the twentieth century that - at least in the schema of the global narrative - tends to serve as a coda to the nineteenth century... Essays on Twentieth-Century History has considerable value in teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. In both instances, the collection challenges readers to reconsider - or perhaps consider - the significance of the twentieth century in the still-developing narrative of global history. The various essays are accessible, provocative, and with many essays offering essential bibliographies, they represent a starting point for historians and historians in training." The Journal of World History, June 2012

• Introduction - Michael Adas 1. World Migration in the Long Twentieth Century - Jose C. Moya and Adam McKeown 2. Twentieth- Century Urbanization: In Search of an Urban Paradigm for an Urban World - Howard Spodek 3. Women in the Twentieth- Century World - Bonnie G. Smith 4. The Gendering of Human Rights in the International Systems of Law in the Twentieth Century - Jean H. Quataert 5. The Impact of the Two World Wars in a Century of Violence - John H. Morrow Jr. 6. Locating the United States in Twentieth- Century World History - Carl J. Guarneri 7. The Technopolitics of Cold War: Toward a Transregional Perspective - Gabrielle Hecht and Paul N. Edwards 8. A Century of Environmental Transitions - Richard P. Tucker About the Contributors