A Concise History of the World

Telling the story of humankind from the Paleolithic to the present, this book widens and lengthens human history. Renowned historian Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks brings a new perspective to world history by examining social and cultural developments across the globe, including families, kin groups, gender hierarchies, sexuality, race and ethnicity, labor, religion, consumption, and material culture. She examines how these structures and activities changed over time, highlighting key developments that defined eras, such as the growth of cities or the creation of a global trading network. The book makes comparisons and generalizations, but also notes diversities and particularities. This new edition includes updates to each chapter, drawing on material from the history of the emotions, Indigenous history, material culture studies, and the history of sexuality. Wiesner-Hanks also expands discussions of climate and the environment, and examines the matters that are at the heart of big questions in world history today.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; 1. Foraging and farming families, to 3000 BCE; 2. Cities and classical societies, 3000 BCE–500 CE; 3. Expanding networks of interaction, 500 CE–1500 CE; 4. A new world of connections, 1500 CE–1800 CE; 5. Industrialization, imperialism, and inequality, 1800 CE–2025 CE .

About the Author :
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks is Distinguished Professor of History Emerita at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She is the long-time senior editor of the Sixteenth Century Journal, editor-in-chief of the seven-volume Cambridge World History (2015), and co-editor, with Mathew Kuefler, of the four-volume Cambridge World History of Sexualities (2024). She is the author or editor of many articles and forty books that have appeared in ten European and Asian languages.