Marc Jason Gilbert - Böcker

It can be said of South Asia what has long been said of its great epic poem, the Mahabharata: "there is nothing in it that cannot be found elsewhere in the world and nothing in the world that cannot be found there." South Asia's historic trans-regional connections to the wider world include the trade between its most ancient civilization with Sumer and central Asia, the diffusion beyond its shores of three of the world's major religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism), its cultural encounters with the Greeks, Islam, European imperialism, the spread of it cuisine (from crystalized sugar to "curry"), and its architecture (including the world's most recognized building, the Taj Mahal).While these connections have insured that South Asia has always loomed large in the consideration of the world's collective past, its societies are currently undergoing a transformation that may enable them to rival the United States and China as the world's largest economy. This study employs accessible language and an engaging narrative to provide insight into how world historical processes, from changes in environment to the movement of peoples and ideas, have shaped and continue to shape the history of South Asia and its place in the wider world.

It can be said of South Asia what has long been said of its great epic poem, the Mahabharata: "there is nothing in it that cannot be found elsewhere in the world and nothing in the world that cannot be found there." South Asia's historic trans-regional connections to the wider world include the trade between its most ancient civilization with Sumer and central Asia, the diffusion beyond its shores of three of the world's major religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism), its cultural encounters with the Greeks, Islam, European imperialism, the spread of it cuisine (from crystalized sugar to "curry"), and its architecture (including the world's most recognized building, the Taj Mahal).While these connections have insured that South Asia has always loomed large in the consideration of the world's collective past, its societies are currently undergoing a transformation that may enable them to rival the United States and China as the world's largest economy. This study employs accessible language and an engaging narrative to provide insight into how world historical processes, from changes in environment to the movement of peoples and ideas, have shaped and continue to shape the history of South Asia and its place in the wider world.

The Tet Offensive of 1968 was perhaps the key incident in the War for Vietnam. But the debate surrounding the offensive continues: Was it a failed last-gasp effort by the defeated North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies? Or was it part of a larger plan that led to victory for the North Vietnamese and their allies? The essays in this volume are among the very first to seek to dispel the wishful thinking, analytical dogmas, and political agendas that have obscured past efforts to master this key turning point in Vietnamese and American history. They reveal that we can look at the truth—and learn from it.

Previous analyses of the student antiwar movement during the Vietnam War have focussed almost exclusively on a few radical student leaders and upon events that occurred at a few elite East Coast universities. This volume breaks new ground in the treatment it affords critiques of the war offered by conservative students, in its assessment of antiwar sentiment among Midwestern and Southern college students, and in its invesitgation of antiwar protests in American high schools. It also provides fresh insight through a discussion of the ways in which American films depicted the student movements and an examination of the role of women and religion in the campus wars of the Sixties and Seventies.The campus dimensions of the antiwar movement were more broad-based and more diverse in membership, roots, and strategy than is often assumed. Each essay in this collection strives not only to present a fair-minded picture of the impact of the Vietnam War on campus, but also to offer balanced reflections on its significance for today's body politic. Contributing authors conclude leading scholars on the war's impact on American society and two artists closely associated with that conflict, Vietnam veteran, writer, and poet W.D. Ehrhart and Country Joe McDonald, author of the antiwar era anthem, I Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag.

In many secondary schools, colleges, and universities across the country, the study of the Vietnam War has become a standard part of the curriculum. In this work, editor Marc Jason Gilbert has organized essays that are designed to serve the needs of the instructors currently teaching or planning to institute such courses. Each essay, written by a leading scholar in his or her field, addresses specific teaching strategies and resources, surveying approaches and providing a detailed examination of those issues that teachers have identified as the most useful or important.The book seeks to furnish instructors with the methods to present the war's broad perspective and complexity to a classroom. It begins with a discussion of some of the major interpretive stances, approaches, and issues that may be pursued in teaching about Vietnam. Subsequent chapters address the operational issues of the air war and misconceptions concerning guerilla war and counterinsurgency; the nature of people's wars; the effectiveness of decision-making and foreign policy-making analysis as classroom learning techniques; the need to place the war in the context of Indochinese, American, and world history; the use of teaching strategies and resources derived from literature, film, and the voice of the veteran; the use of Asian, European, and American literary sources to gain insight into the experience of the Vietnamese people; the anti-war movement; issues of peace, sex, and ethnicity; the integration of such approaches and issues into a course on the war; the use of materials drawn from the Vietnam War to further students' analytical skills; innovative ways of bringing primary printed sources into the classroom; and the strength and weaknesses of Vietnam War classroom texts and key monographs. The book concludes with a guide to further resources and a selection of Vietnam War course syllabi employed by scholars active in the field. This work will be a major resource for teachers and those studying to be teachers, as well as for courses on the Vietnam War, Southeast Asia, and U.S. History and Politics.

One of the hallmarks of world history is the ever-increasing ability of humans to cross cultural boundaries. Taking an encounters approach that opens up history to different perspectives and experiences, Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern World History examines cultural contact between people from across the globe between 1453 and the present.The book examines the historical record of these contacts, distilling from those processes patterns of interaction, different peoples’ perspectives, and the ways these encounters tended to subvert the commonly accepted assumptions about differences between peoples in terms of race, ethnicity, nationhood, or empire. This new edition has been updated to employ current scholarship and address recent developments, as well as increasing the treatment of indigenous agency, including the major role played by Polynesians in the spread of Christianity in Oceania. The final chapter has been updated to reflect the refugee crisis and the evolving political situation in Europe concerning its immigrant population. Supported by engaging discussion questions and enlivened with the voices and views of those who were and remain directly engaged in the process of cross-cultural exchange, this highly accessible volume remains a valuable resource for all students of world history.