World Civilizations II Research Guide

A history of Japan from earliest times to the present, with a focus on its often tempestuous, often creative relationships with other countries. The book ranges from Japan's prehistoric interactions with Korea and China, to the Western challenge of the late 1500s,the partial isolation under the Tokugawa family (1600-1868), and in more recent times, when Japan modernized ferociously, turned imperialist, and lost a world war to became the world's second largest economy - and its greatest foreign aid donor.

A history of Chinese political, economic, and cultural life, ranging from the origins of civilization in China to the beginning of the 21st century. Historian Paul Ropp combines vivid story-telling with astute analysis to shed light on some of the larger questions of Chinese history. What is distinctive about China in comparison with other civilizations? What have been the major changes and continuities in Chinese life over the past four millennia? Offering a global perspective, the book shows how China's nomadic neighbors to the north and west influenced much of the political, military, and even cultural history of China.

Over the course of twelve centuries, Russia's peoples overcame the constant challenges posed by geography, climate, availability of natural resources, and devastating foreign invasions to become the world's second largest land empire and the largest in modern history. This introduction to Russia's history follows the development of local tribes into a federation of principalities centered at Kiev, the shift of power to Moscow and the centralization of the state, and Russia's pursuit of imperial ambitions.

From the dawn of civilization to the modern dilemmas of nation building in Africa and the Middle East, WORLD HISTORY takes a fascinating look at the common challenges and experiences that unite the human past and inform the future.

This book explores the First World War from a genuinely global perspective. Putting a human face on the war, William Kelleher Storey takes into account individual decisions and experiences as well as environmental and technological factors, such as food, geography, manpower, and weapons.

Women in World History brings together the most recent scholarship in women's and world history in a single volume covering the period from 1450 to the present, enabling readers to understand women's relationship to world developments over the past five hundred years.

This pathbreaking study provides the first comprehensive examination of India-China interactions in the broader contexts of Asian and world history.

This revelatory book charts and explains the impact and consequences of successive pandemics, plagues and epidemics on the course of world history - all through the lens of today's ongoing global experience of COVID 19. Ranging from prehistory to the present day, it first defines what constitutes a pandemic or epidemic then looks at 20 guilty diseases: including cholera, influenza, bubonic plague, leprosy, measles, smallpox, malaria, AIDS, MERS, SARS, Zika, Ebola and, of course, Covid-19.

In A World At War, 1911-1949, leading and emerging scholars of the cultural history of the two world wars begin to break down the traditional barriers between the historiographies of the two conflicts, identifying commonalities as well as casting new light on each as part of a broader mission, in honour of Professor John Horne, to expand the boundaries of academic exploration of warfare in the 20th century.

By 1950, the technological advances of the 20th century were in full swing and several important social and political reforms were making their mark. This set offers in-depth analysis of a broad range of historical documents, including legal codes, letters, speeches, constitutions, reports, and books, from "Essential Truths" by Rufus Jones to the Nato Treaty.

In the mid-twentieth century, the struggle against colonial rule fundamentally reshaped the world and the lives of the majority of the world's population. Decolonization, Black and Brown freedom movements, the establishment of the United Nations and NATO, an exploding Cold War, a burgeoning world human rights movement, all became part of the dramatic events that swept through Africa at a furious pace, with fifty nations gaining independence in roughly fifty years.