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Summary

Based on the highly successful A History of Western Society, Understanding Western Society: A Brief History captures students’ interest in the everyday life of the past and ties social history to the broad sweep of politics and culture. Abridged by 30%, the narrative is paired with innovative pedagogy, designed to help students focus on significant developments as they read and review. An innovative, three-step end-of-Chapter study guide helps students master key facts and move toward synthesis.

Author Biography

John P. McKay (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is professor emeritus at the University of Illinois. He has written or edited numerous works, including the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize-winning book Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885-1913 and Tramways and Trolleys: The Rise of Urban Mass Transport in Europe. He also contributed to Imagining the Twentieth Century.

Bennett D. Hill (Ph.D., Princeton), late of the University of Illinois, was the history department chair from 1978 to 1981. He published Church and State in the Middle Ages, English Cistercian Monasteries and Their Patrons in the Twelfth Century, and numerous articles and reviews, and was one of the contributing editors to The Encyclopedia of World History. A Benedictine monk of St. Anselm's Abbey in Washington, D.C., he was also a visiting professor at Georgetown University.

John Buckler (Ph.D., Harvard University) taught history at the University of Illinois. Published books include Aegean Greece in the Fourth Century B.C., Philip II and the Sacred War, and Theban Hegemony, 371-362 B.C. With Hans Beck, he most recently published Central Greece and the Politics of Power in the Fourth Century.

Clare Haru Crowston (Ph.D., Cornell University) teaches at the University of Illinois, where she is currently associate professor of history. She is the author of Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675-1791, which won the Berkshire and Hagley Prizes. She edited two special issues of the Journal of Women's History, has published numerous journal articles and reviews, and is a past president of the Society for French Historical Studies and a former chair of the Pinkney Prize Committee.

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) taught first at Augustana College in Illinois, and since 1985 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she is currently UWM Distinguished Professor in the department of history. She is the coeditor of the Sixteenth Century Journal and the author or editor of more than twenty books, most recently The Marvelous Hairy Girls: The Gonzales Sisters and Their Worlds and Gender in History. She currently serves as the Chief Reader for Advanced Placement World History.

Joe Perry (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is Associate Professor of modern German and European history at Georgia State University. He has published numerous articles and is author of the recently published book Christmas in Germany: A Cultural History. His current research interests include issues of consumption, gender, and television in East and West Germany after World War II.

Chapter 15
European Exploration and Conquest, 1450–1650

What were the limits of world contacts before Columbus?
How and why did Europeans undertake voyages of expansion?
What was the impact of conquest?
How did Europe and the world change after Columbus?
How did expansion change European attitudes and beliefs?

Chapter 16
Absolutism and Constitutionalism in Europe, ca. 1589–1725

What made the seventeenth century an "Age of Crisis"?
Why did France rise and Spain fall in this period?
What explains the rise of absolutism in Austria and Prussia?
What was distinctive about Russia and the Ottoman Empire?
Where and why did constitutionalism triumph?
What developments did baroque art and music reflect?

Chapter 17
Toward a New Worldview, 1540–1789

How did European views of nature change in this period?
What were the core principles of the Enlightenment?
What did enlightened absolutism mean?

Chapter 18
The Expansion of Europe, 1650–1800

How did agriculture change between 1650 and 1800?
Why did population rise in the eighteenth century?
What led to the growth of rural industry?
What were guilds and why were they controversial?
What role did colonial markets play in Europe's development?

Chapter 19
The Changing Life of the People, 1700–1800

How did family life change in the eighteenth century?
How did attitudes toward child rearing change in this period?
How and why did popular culture change during this period?
What role did religion play in eighteenth-century society?
How did medicine evolve in the eighteenth century?

Chapter 20
The Revolution in Politics, 1775–1815

What were the origins of the French Revolution?
What forces shaped the Revolution between 1789 and 1791?
Why did the Revolution take a radical turn after 1791?
What led to the rise and fall of Napoleon?

Chapter 21
The Revolution in Energy and Industry, ca. 1780–1850

How did the Industrial Revolution develop in Britain?
How did continental Europe industrialize after 1815?
What were the social consequences of industrialization?

Chapter 22
Ideologies and Upheavals, 1815–1850

How was peace restored and maintained after 1815?
What new ideologies emerged to challenge conservatism?
What were the characteristics of the romantic movement?
How and where was conservatism challenged after 1815?
Why did the revolutions of 1848 fail almost completely?

Chapter 23
Life in the Emerging Urban Society, 1840–1900

How did urban life change in the nineteenth century?
What were the characteristics of urban industrial society?
How did urban industrialization affect family life?
How and why did intellectual life change in this period?

Chapter 24
The Age of Nationalism, 1850–1914

What kind of state did Napoleon III build in France?
How were Italy and Germany able to unify?
How did the American Civil War change the United States?
Why did Russia and the Ottoman Empire try to modernize?
What general domestic political trends emerged after 1871?
What explains the rise of socialism?

Chapter 25
The West and the World, 1815–1914

How did Western industrialization change the world economy?
What explains global migration patterns in this period?
What characterized Western imperialism after 1880?
How did non-Westerners respond to Western imperialism?

Chapter 26
War and Revolution, 1914–1919

What caused the outbreak of the First World War?
How did the First World War differ from previous wars?
In what ways did the war transform life on the home front?
Why did world war lead to revolution in Russia?
In what ways was the Allied peace settlement flawed?

Chapter 27
The Age of Anxiety, ca. 1900–1940

How did intellectual developments reflect postwar anxieties?
How did modernism revolutionize European culture?
How did consumer culture change the lives of Europeans?
What obstacles to lasting peace did European leaders face?
What were the causes and consequences of the depression?

Chapter 28
Dictatorships and the Second World War, 1919–1945

What characteristics did totalitarian dictatorships share?
How did Stalin and his followers build a totalitarian state?
What kind of government did Mussolini establish in Italy?
How and why did Nazi policies lead to World War II?
What explains the Allied victory in World War II?

Chapter 29
Cold War Conflict and Consensus, 1945–1965

Why was World War II followed so quickly by the Cold War?
What explains postwar economic growth in Western Europe?
How did the Soviet Union dominate Eastern Europe?
What led to decolonization in the years after World War II?)
What kinds of societies emerged in Europe after 1945?

Chapter 30
Challenging the Postwar Order, 1960–1991

Why did the postwar consensus of the 1950s break down?
What were the consequences of economic decline in the 1970s?
What led to the decline of Soviet power in Eastern Europe?
Why did revolution sweep through Eastern Europe in 1989?

Chapter 31
Europe in an Age of Globalization, 1990 to the Present

How did life change in Russia and Eastern Europe after 1989?
How did globalization change European life?
What explains Europe's increasing ethnic diversity?
What challenges will Europe face in the coming decades?

Supplemental Materials

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