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Moderator's (DAS) Note: This review was previously posted on H- Teach. It is written by Ken Wolf, one of H-World's editorial board members. H-World welcomes other comments about this textbook, as well as responses to the review from any of the authors. ================================================================ "World History," by Upshur, Terry, Holoka, Goff, and Lowry (published by West Publishing Co.) is a "third generation" world civ. textbook, i.e. it goes beyond the first generation (drop a few chapters on the "non-West" into an old Western civ. text) and the second generation (Stavrianos, McNeill-thematic but still somewhat Eurocentric). Upshur's greatest strength is the fact that it gives balanced coverage to all areas of the world; its greatest weakness as a teaching tool for undergrads is the way that it does this: through rigidly chronological chapters which break civilizations into pieces so that they lose their coherence for students. For example, chapter 2 on "Early Civilization of South and East Asia" covers the Indus Valley civilization, the early Vedic period in India and the Shang and Chou dynasties in China. Chapter 3 looks at most everything that happened between 1500-250 BCE, from Phoencians and early Greeks through the late Vedic period in India and Buddhism and Jainism to Taoism, Confucianism and Legalism in China. Chapter 4 then covers the Hellenistic period, the rise and fall of Rome,the Mauryan Empire in India, and The Han Dynasty in China. Therefore, for a student to have a coherent picture of Indian, Chinese, or Greek and Roman civilization, the instructor must assign portions of two or three chapters. Surely the authors could combine fairness with coherence in a clearer fashion than they do. The way most of us teach (and learn) about civilizations is to see them as a whole. The Upshur texts does not present these early civilizations as coherent wholes. I should add that this is less of a problem in the second half of the text but even here the rigid adherence to chronological units instead of coherent topical or geographical ones is a problem. Ken Wolf - History Murray State University (502) 762-2232 or 6582 A23211F@MSUMUSIC.Bitnet
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