World History: The Big Eras is a brief history of humankind written to encourage teachers and students to think about the past on big scales. Presenting world history in panoramic view, it puts forward the idea that students will achieve deeper understanding of world history, and find their studies more engaging, if they are guided to relate particular subject matter to large patterns of historical change.
World History: The Big Eras brings together in a seamless narrative new revisions of the nine Big Era introductory essays on World History for Us All. This slim volume will be a valuable companion to all educators who use World History for Us All. The book also includes an Introduction, an Epilogue that reproduces the “Reflecting on the Past, Thinking about the Future” section on the site, and a collection of study questions.
Teachers wrestling with mandated history-social science standards will find the book useful for development of coherent, lucid curriculum and for helping students connect specific topics to broad landscapes of historical meaning. The book’s world-scale approach is highly compatible with the Advanced Placement World History program and that course’s focus “big ideas of continuity and change.” College and university world history instructors may assign the book to give students a concise, persuasive conceptual frame for investigating the past on a variety of scales of time and space.
The authors of World History: The Big Eras are the Director and two of the Associate Directors of World History for Us All.
Order your copies of World History: The Big Eras from the National Center for History in the Schools, University of California, Los Angeles.
