Amazon.com description: Product Description: For today's busy student, we've created a new line of highly portable books at affordable prices. Each title in the Books a la Carte Plus program features the exact same content from our traditional textbook in a convenient notebook-ready, loose-leaf version - allowing students to take only what they need to class. As an added bonus, each Books a la Carte Plus edition is accompanied by an access code to all of the resources found in one of our best-selling multimedia products. Best of all? Our Books a la Carte Plus titles cost less than a used textbook! The West: Encounters & Transformations Concise Edition is a brief version of the comprehensive book. It explores the changing definition and identity of the West throughout history, emphasizing the encounters between different cultures, beliefs, ideas, and peoples that shaped Western civilization, both outside the West and within it.