The World History Workbook

Book excerpt: For more than two thousand years, the Socratic dialogue has been a hallmark of higher education and the method which defines critical thinking. David Hertzel's textbook provides a framework of world historical sources, narratives, and questions through which instructors can gracefully adopt a Socratic method for their General Education classes. No textbook in any field applies critical methods more successfully than does this one. Now in its third edition, the author and editors at Rowman and Littlefield have updated The World History Workbook to include a new chapter on the mixed legacy of globalization and modernization, both defined as having descended from humanist principles. The third edition also includes several additional primary sources, revised numerous projects, passages on a diversity of world historical topics including women, folktales, Swahili as a lingua franca, and the personal significance of ancestry. The core material of narrative, primary sources, and projects remains intact from the first and second editions. The Workbook follows the argument that humans share a common history, albeit with contrasting particular experiences. The subject of the course therefore addresses the place students and their instructors hold in human history. Students are encouraged to explore historical problems that persist in modern society and project questions suggest grand yet accessible discussion topics including justice, gender, bureaucracy, human rights, individuality, ancestry, faith and reason, and other timeless human problems.