Ways of the World: A Brief Global History

Ways of the World offers a genuine alternative for world history survey courses. Designed from the beginning as a brief text, Ways of the World focuses on the "big picture" of significant historical developments and is thoroughly global in its thematic and comparative approach. The accessible voice of a single author, with long experience in the classroom and in the world history movement, delivers to students an insightful new synthesis, thought-provoking questions, and chapter ending sections that invite reflection on the meaning of world history. Available in full color and in combined and split volumes, Ways of the World makes the whole world teachable.

Robert W. Strayer regularly teaches both halves of the world history?course at California State University, Monterey Bay.? Until his move to California in 2002, he taught courses in the history of the Soviet Union, Modern Africa, and world history for 32 years at the State University of New York College at Brockport.? Strayer received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching at SUNY Brockport in 1997 and a similar award for Excellence in Scholarship in 2002.?In 1998, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Dr. Strayer began academic life as an African historian, and wrote Kenya: Focus on Nationalism (1975) and The Making of Mission Communities in East Africa (1978). More recently he developed a specialty in Soviet history and wrote Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?: Understanding Historical Change (1998) and The Communist Experiment: Revolution, Socialism, and Global Conflict in the Twentieth Century (2007) comparing the experience of the Soviet Union and China. He has also served as co-editor of the Explorations in World History series. Throughout his career, his primary intellectual focus has been world history, serving as a teacher, scholar, textbook author, consultant, and member of the Executive Committee of the World History Association.