Includes bibliographical references and index.

Documents - Maps - Chronologies - Preface - Introduction to students of Western Civilization - 1. The Ancient near east: the first civilizations - 2. The ancient near east: peoples and empires - 3. The civilization of the Greeks - 4. The hellenistic world - 5. The roman republic - 6. The roman empire - 7. The passing of the Roman world and the emergence of medieval civilization - 8. European civilization in the early middle ages, 750-1000 - 9. The recovery and growth of European society in the high middle ages - 10. The rise of Kingdoms and the growth of church power - 11. The late middle ages: crisis and disintegration in the fourteenth century - 12. Recovery and rebirth: the renaissance - 13. Reformation and religious warfare in the sixteenth century - 14. Europe and the world: New encounters, 1500-1800 - 15. State building and the search for order in the seventeenth century - 16. Toward a new heaven and a new earth: the scientific revolution and the emergence of modern science - 17. The eighteenth century: an age of enlightenment - 18. The eighteenth century: european states, international wars, and social change - 19. Revolutionary politics: the era of the french revolution and Napoleon - 20. The industrial revolution and its impact on european society - 21. Reaction, revolution, and romanticism, 1815-1850 - 22. An age of nationalism and realism, 1850-1871 - 23. Mass society in an "age of progress," 1871-1894 - 24. An age of modernity, anxiety, and imperialism, 1894-1914 - 25. The beginning of the twentieth-century crisis: war and revolution - 26. The futile search for a new stability: Europe between the wars, 1919-1939 - 27. The deepening european crisis world war II - 28. Cold war and a new western world, 1945-1970. - 29. The contemporary Western World (since 1970).