Although the author states his intention to provide a text for history students with little to no prior history coursework, there are historical references that are not generally known and for which no context or explanation are provided.
The material in the text is not presented in the most logical order. Essential background information is given near the end of the section and would have been valuable to understanding the events presented at the beginning of the section.
The text contains frequent punctuation errors and occasional grammar errors. These errors disrupt and confuse the flow of narrative. This text provides a basic framework for a Western Civilization course, but an instructor would need to address its grammar and content issues, as well as other issues mentioned above, before assigning chapters to students.
The text is comprehensive and manages to cover in at least some detail all the topics one would expect in a Western Civ survey—partly this is achieved through the three-volume format. The accuracy of the text is a two-fold issue. Regarding the details and sometimes the basic features of institutions, systems, and peoples, the results are more mixed. The first revision of ancient science had actually come during the Abbasid period, and Muslim, Christian, and Jewish medieval scientists had pushed far past the boundaries of ancient science by the early s.
The relevance of the text is a complicated issue. In many chapters, however, there is relatively little to suggest the last fifteen years of scholarship on the issues, and little to suggest to students that the study of history is one of motion, one that is constantly in a state of tension, revision, and re-revision of interpretations over contested historical facts. Clarity is not an issue—the writing style is both engaging and largely free from jargon, with terms being explained in the text.
The text is internally consistent—there is a single authorial voice and point of view throughout both volumes that translates into a unified whole. Repeating the introduction in each volume of the series helps to reinforce this single vision.
Although the text is arranged in PDFs across three parts, rather than two as is more common in Western Civ courses, nothing prevents picking and choosing different chapters as needed for the course.
The chapters themselves all contain several sections indicated by subheadings. The interface is clean, with no observable distortion of images or text in the entire document. There are on average maps and images per chapter, drawn from open sources. The text seems to avoid problematic terminology for the most part. That is, the text largely remains descriptive rather than necessarily analytical, and generally maintains a European perspective.
It would be up to the individual instructors who use this textbook to assemble primary sources that give a diverse set of perspectives and experiences. The introduction, which discusses the term "Western Civilization," its history and the author's approach, lays out problems and possibilities in a manner perhaps more restrained than is warranted, since the positive aspects of thinking on Western Civ were often, if not always, entwined with a white supremacist outlook and advocacy, and it would be good to discuss these moral and philosophical tensions in the introduction as well.
On the whole this three-volume series is a tremendous improvement on previous OER Western Civ textbooks. However, given the limitations described above, as well as the fact that it comes with no timelines, key terms, indices, glossaries, story lines, or primary sources, and few links to further resources, instructors will still have to do a tremendous amount of work to build a course around this textbook.
It is available in three volumes covering the following time periods and topics:. Content Accuracy rating: 4 The content in many ways reflects prevailing consensus within the field about historiographic debates. Clarity rating: 5 The text is written in accessible prose. Consistency rating: 5 The text uses consistent terminology and is largely consistent in its stated aims in the series introduction.
Your Comment:. Read Online Download. Great book, The Story of Civilization pdf is enough to raise the goose bumps alone. Add a review Your Rating: Your Comment:.
Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud. History of Ancient Civilization by Charles Seignobos. Please utilize them wisely and don't make them Commercial. We request you to respect our Hard Work. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.
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