Michael Burger is a professor of history at Auburn University at Montgomery.

• List of FiguresList of MapsPrefaceNotes on references, further reading, and dates 1. Foundations: The Ancient Near East 2. The Greeks: Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic 3. Rome: From Republic to Empire 4. Rome's Fall? Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages 5. The High and Late Middle Ages 6. The Early Modern West I: The Reformation, the great consolidation, and the end of Christendom 7. The Early Modern West II: Science, society, and the state 8. The Early Modern West III: Enlightenment, industrialization, and an unraveled compromise9. The West, 1815-1914: The search for community, and responses to the Enlightenment and revolution 10. From ca. 1914 to the present: The search for community, global conflict, and the harvest of the modern West 11. Coda: The Shaping of Western Civilization SourcesIndex