Amazon.com description: Product Description: Noted teachers and scholars William J. Duiker and Jackson J. Spielvogel present a balanced, highly readable overview of world history that explores common challenges and experiences of the human past and identifies key patterns over time. Thorough coverage of political, economic, social, religious, intellectual, cultural, and military history is integrated into a chronological framework to help students gain an appreciation and understanding of the distinctive character and development of individual cultures in society. This approach, with organization around seven major themes (Science and Technology; Arts and Ideas; Family and Society; Politics and Government; Earth and the Environment; Religion and Philosophy; and, Interaction and Exchange), helps students link events together in a broad comparative and global framework, thereby placing the contemporary world in a more meaningful historical context.