From the Author to the Reader
Each age writes its own history. Not because the earlier history is wrong, but because each age faces new problems, asks new questions, and seeks new answers. This precept is self-evident today when the tempo of change is increasing exponentially, creating a correspondingly urgent need for new history posing new questions and offering new answers.
Our own generation, for example, was brought up on West-oriented history, and naturally so, in a West-dominated world. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were an era of Western hegemony in politics, in economics, and in culture. But the two World Wars and the ensuing colonial revolutions quickly ended that hegemony, as evidenced by the disappearance of the great European empires from the maps of the world. The names and the colors on the maps changed radically, reflecting the new world that had emerged by the mid-twentieth century.
Slowly and reluctantly we recognized that our traditional West-oriented history was irrelevant and misleading in this world. A new global perspective was needed to make sense of the altered circumstances. The transition from the old to the new was achieved, albeit with much soul searching and acrimony. By the 1960s the reality of the shift was evident in the emergence of the World History Association, in the appearance of the Journal of World History, and in the publication of the first edition of this text.
This brings us back to our original question: Why publish a new edition for the twentieth-first century, only a few decades after the first edition? The answer is the same as the answer given to justify the first edition: a new world requires a correspondingly new historical approach. The postcolonial world of the 1960s necessitated a new global history. Today the equally new world of the 1990s, and of the twentieth-first century, requires an equally new historical approach. The new world of the 1960s was in large part the product of the colonial revolutions. The new world of the 1990s , as Pope Pius VI noted, is the product of the “magic influence of science and technology”. The pervasiveness of this influence is evident in the “gigantic problems” it has created in all aspects of our lives. For example, students of the late twentieth century doubtless remember their daily prostration under their wooden desks, probably wondering what protection those flimsy structures could offer against nuclear bombs.
The generation of students had to face up to not only new dangers to human life, but also to unprecedented peril to the mother Earth which had given birth to that life. Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau has warmed: Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the twentieth century than in all previous human history. Likewise the environmental organization Worldwatch Institute concluded in 1989: By the end of the next decade the die will pretty well be cast. As the world enters the twentieth-first century, the community of nations either will have rallied and turned back the threatening trends, or environmental deterioration and social disintegration will be feeding on each other.
發表於2025-01-31
A Global History 2025 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載
“讀曆史先讀通史”是個閤理且普遍的觀念,這本書名宏大的著作很容易讓人産生一本書打通全世界經脈的幻覺,將之列為學習世界史的首選,然而若真想對世界曆史有一個符閤現代思維“貫通”的理解,這本外行首推的書可能並非首選。 實際上,《全球通史》的價值並不在於貫通瞭曆史...
評分這本書很值得讀!作者從宏觀上整體把握曆史,改變瞭我們過去對曆史的分裂式認識。英文詞匯比較簡單,學曆史還能鍛煉英語能力。
評分書店裏看過,還行,故而力薦。 我的感受是:作者視野開闊,知識淵博 全書行文流暢,通俗易懂。 隨意翻開哪一段,都可以順暢地讀下去~ 斯塔夫裏阿諾斯是個未曾謀麵的學者,雖如此,方便易讀的文字還是讓我感到他的可愛~
評分 評分1歐亞大陸上的文明也是多種多樣的,它們的獨特性取決於各自的所在地與中東最早的文明中心地相隔之遠近。中國與中東之間相隔一片遼闊的、荒漠的地區,並有大山作屏障,因此,從古代最早時候起直至今天,中國文明一直與歐亞大陸的其他文明彼此相異。 —— 全球通史 2中國人的...
圖書標籤: 曆史 世界史 全球通史 斯塔夫裏阿諾斯 英文 History English 通史
高中初見時便生硬地從乾癟的錢包裏掏錢買瞭不菲的中文盜版。 這際遇頗有幾分預先寫定的味道,冥冥之中... 終於在大學畢業之前擁有並粗讀瞭其英文原版,雖然是影印版。 雖然作者裝的很impartial, 受西方正統教育齣來,觀點時不時還是打著自我為中心,自我文化為中心的烙印。當然,本書對全球曆史構架及時間劃分很值得學習藉鑒。
評分宏觀意義上的經典著作,每一篇後麵的“what it means for us today"對於讀者來說很有啓發意義。
評分買瞭沒有認真讀的一套書,值得好好讀一遍
評分文明史
評分啃。 讀完瞭~
A Global History 2025 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載