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Unlike many of its longer and more expensive competitors, The Shaping of Western Civilization is a short and coherent overview of the history of Western civilization from the ancient Near East to late eighteenth-century Europe and America. Michael Burger's skills as both writer and synthesizer enable students to see connections across time and to witness how the West's past moulds its present.
Michael Burger's goal is to "put readers in a position to ask fruitful questions of primary sources." To achieve this goal, The Shaping of Western Civilization is shorter than most overview texts to give students more time to engage with the sources. By obtaining a sound background from the textbook, students can ask meaningful questions of the primary sources, especially those collected in the overview's counterpart, Sources for the History of Western Civilization: Volume I.
Maps, timelines, black and white illustrations, notes on references, and a section on further reading are all included.
Special Combined Price:The Shaping of Western Civilization: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment may be ordered together with Sources for the History of Western Civilization, Volume I at a special discounted price. In order to secure the package price, the following ISBN must be used when ordering: 978-1-55402-605-0.
"This is my new favourite textbook. It is a truly remarkable achievement: a survey of Western history that is simultaneously brief, accessible, lucid, and consistently interesting. Burger shines light on the craft of history itself." - Shannon McSheffrey, Concordia University
- Imprint: University of Toronto Press
- Published: April 2008
- Pages: 300
Michael Burger is an historian of medieval Europe and the Dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Auburn University at Montgomery. He is the author of Bishops, Clerks, and Diocesan Governance in Thirteenth-Century England: Reward and Punishment (Cambridge University Press) and the editor of the two-volume reader Sources for the History of Western Civilization (University of Toronto Press).
This is an effective and innovative approach to the writing of history that combines current scholarship with a fresh anecdotal gloss that will appeal to undergraduates. Burger manages the impressive feat of elucidating the mentalities of all manner of people in the distant past in language that speaks to the present. His accounts of medieval Christian outlooks and institutions are concise, lively, and compelling. He makes quick sense out of complex historical events that are often difficult to teach, while losing none of the nuances.
Elspeth Carruthers, University of Illinois-Chicago
This is my new favourite textbook. It is a truly remarkable achievement: a survey of Western history that is simultaneously brief, accessible, lucid, and consistently interesting. Burger shines light on the craft of history itself.
Shannon McSheffrey, Concordia University
I believe that Burger's text received the most enthusiastic response to an introductory textbook from my students that I have ever seen; they appreciated its low cost, its brevity, but above all the clarity of the author's argument. More than that, though, they read the text and assimilated what they learned. I am quite pleased.
Hans Peter Broedel, University of North Dakota