World History
Each topic and region covered is done thoroughly, but in the ancient period there’s extra weight on Rome and the medieval period is a bit Middle East heavy. There’s also a near complete absence of Oceania and some other societies on the margins of major empires, like the Celts. An exception to this is “Border States: Sogdiana, Korea, and Japan” in chapter 12. Overall, though, the coverage and balance is better than many existing World History 1 texts where Europe often dominates.
I’ll speak to my specialist area, early medieval Europe, as the one I’m best placed to evaluate the accuracy of. This book presents a mostly accurate and nuanced portrayal of the current scholarly consensus of late antiquity and the early European Middle Ages, with a few glaring problems in discussions of the “Germanic” peoples. A “Dueling Voices” section presents scholars’ debates about collapse vs. transformation of the western Roman Empire. Different post-Roman experiences by region are acknowledged, and described fairly well. The problem of applying a linguistic category (speaking a “Germanic” language) to peoples in an ethnic sense is raised and the myth of rigid ethnic groups deftly disposed of. That makes it all the more surprising to see an outdated use of “German” and “Germanic” interchangeably, and a selective portrayal of Germanic society as more patriarchal and violent to women than Roman or other neighboring societies.
The content is fairly up-to-date, and its modular organization means many updates to it are straightforward and can be done as soon as the next semester. Corrections or suggestions are encouraged on the website, and a viewable “errata” list provides transparency on recent suggestions and their implementation. Recent examples show the occasional corrected typo and one instance of a correction for accuracy.
The text is very clear, with terms well described for novices and a helpful glossary. The prose is also engaging.
Chapters are all structured similarly, and sections fit together well within the book’s framing, with no obvious disconnect between different regions or eras. There are no major terminological shifts, and when a term means something slightly different in a different context, that is clearly explained.
Section and chapter introductions are general enough that they would still work well if a professor chose to realign or omit chapters or subsections. Each chapter is divided into sections that can be placed individually in an LMS, and the course package makes that easy. There are many subheadings within each section that further allow for assigning a selection of the text.
Learning objectives and a section summary serve as helpful bookends for each chapter. Each chapter, and the book as a whole, is generally presented in a logical order, though the ancient Americas chapter includes everything pre-Columbian in the 1000 BCE-500 CE section – though the errata list shows that a user already requested this be changed, and that it’s being considered for the future since that would require some major structural change to the book.
The desktop interface is easy to navigate while reading, and resizing the font does not distort charts or images. The contents menu includes chapter sections, though not subsections. There is a separate tab for highlights, but if you want to navigate to one, it will open in a different window instead of having a side panel like the table of contents. This is clunky, and makes it hard to see the context for highlights. If all you want to use the highlights for is to create a summary, though, you will have a ready-made list complete with chapter sections.
I saw no grammatical errors and just one typo.
Coverage is fairly diverse, with most of the world well represented (except Oceania). Interactions and travels between regions, and the presence of minorities within regions, is commonly discussed.
The ancillary resources include Powerpoints, a test bank, and instructor answer guide. The course cartridge is as modular as the book, and includes some very useful “how to’s” and “why’s” for students. 17 chapters makes use in a 14-15-week semester without modification somewhat challenging, but not insurmountable.
Overall, this is an excellent text with good support materials and mechanisms for future-proofing. It is a huge improvement over existing OER options for the first half of World History.