This innovative book looks beyond the traditional history of European expansion—which highlights European conquests, empire building, and hegemony—in order

What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior t

"Our contemplation of London must begin, as London began, at the river. The River Thames is a slow moving and rather murky body of water, flowing west to east,

Plagues in World History provides a concise, comparative world history of catastrophic infectious diseases, including plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera, i

A magisterial, myth-dispelling history of Islamic Spain spanning the millennium between the founding of Islam in the seventh century and the final expulsion of