n Preface
With this, the tenth edition of A History of
Western Society, we invite our colleagues and current and
past adopters to join us in seeing the book as if for the first
time. For us, this edition — undertaken at a new publishing
house — has been an opportunity to revisit our original vision
and to thereby realize the most thorough reconsideration of
our text since we first began. A History of Western Society
grew out of the initial three authors’ desire to infuse new life
into the study of Western Civilization. We knew that histori-
ans were using imaginative questions and innovative research
to open up vast new areas of historical interest and knowl-
edge. At that point, social history was dramatically changing
the ways we understood the past, and we decided to create a
book that would re-create the lives of ordinary people in ap-
pealing human terms, while also giving major economic, po-
litical, cultural, and intellectual developments the attention
they unquestionably deserve. The three new authors who have
joined the original author team — and who first used the
book as students or teachers — remain committed to advanc-
ing this vision for today’s classroom. With its new look, line-
by-line edits aimed at increasing the book’s readability and
accessibility, reinvigorated scholarship, and broader defini-
tion of social history that reflects where instructors and stu-
dents are now, we’ve rethought every element of the book to
bring the original vision into the twenty-first century and
make the past memorable for a new generation of students
and instructors.
History as a discipline never stands still, and over the last
several decades cultural history has joined social history as a
source of dynamism. Because of its emphasis on the ways
people made sense of their lives, A History of Western Society
has always included a large amount of cultural history, rang-
ing from foundational works of philosophy and literature to
popular songs and stories. The focus on cultural history has
been heightened in this tenth edition in a way that highlights
the interplay between men’s and women’s lived experiences
and the ways men and women reflect on these experiences
to create meaning. The joint social and cultural perspective
requires — fortunately, in our opinion — the inclusion of ob-
jects as well as texts as important sources for studying history,
which has allowed us to incorporate the growing emphasis
on material culture in the work of many historians.
These new directions have not changed the central mis-
sion of the book, which is to introduce students to the broad
sweep of Western Civilization in a fresh yet balanced man-
ner. Every edition has incorporated new research to keep the
book up-to-date and respond to the changing needs of read-
ers and instructors, and we have continued to do this in the
tenth edition. As we have made these changes, large and small,
we have sought to give students and teachers an integrated
perspective so that they could pursue — on their own or in
the classroom — the historical questions that they find partic-
ularly exciting and significant.
Textual Changes
For the tenth edition we took the time to revisit, reconsider,
and revise every paragraph of the book. We paid painstaking
attention to the writing, and we’re proud of the results. In-
formed by recent scholarship, every chapter was revised with
an aim toward readability and accessibility. Several main lines
of revision have guided our many changes. In particular, as
noted above, we have broadened the book’s focus on social
history to include a greater emphasis on cultural history.
This increased emphasis is supported in every chapter by the
use of artifacts that make history tangible and by the new
Living in the Past visual feature, described below, that dem-
onstrates the intersection between society and culture. In
addition, the social and cultural context of Western Civiliza-
tion has been integrated throughout the narrative, including
expanded and new sections on Egyptian life, common people
in Charlemagne’s empire, artistic patronage during the Re-
naissance, identities and communities of the Atlantic world,
eighteenth-century education, nineteenth-century family life,
consumer society between the two world wars, life under
Nazi occupation, and state and society in the East Bloc, among
others.
The tenth edition continues to reflect Europe’s interactions
with the rest of the world and the role of gender in shaping
human experience. The global context of European history
is reflected in new scholarship on the steppe peoples of Cen-
tral Asia, Muslim views of the Crusades, the Atlantic world,
decolonization, and globalization. New scholarship on gen-
der is woven throughout the book and is included in sections
on Frankish queens, medieval prostitution, female human-
ists, politics and gender during the French Revolution, and
gender roles during industrialization.
These major aspects of revision are accompanied by the in-
corporation of a wealth of new scholarship and subject areas.
Additions, among others, include material on Paleolithic and
Neolithic life (Chapter 1); the Neo-Babylonians (Chapter 2);
the later period of the Roman Empire in the West (Chapter 7);
the bubonic plague in eastern Europe (Chapter 12); the Jesu-
its (Chapter 14); the limits of enlightened absolutism (Chap-
ter 17); eighteenth-century beliefs and practices (Chapter 19);
expanded coverage of the peasant revolt (Chapter 20); sec-
tions on the Battle of the Somme, waging total war, and the
human costs of World War I (Chapter 26); popular support
for National Socialism (Chapter 27); the affluent society
(Chapter 30); and up-to-date coverage of the economic
downturn in Europe, the Iraq War, and the global recession
(Chapter 31).
xxv