Description: Telling the story of humankind from the Paleolithic to the present, this book widens and lengthens human history. Renowned historian Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks brings a new perspective to world history by examining social and cultural developments across the globe, including families, kin groups, gender hierarchies, sexuality, race and ethnicity, labor, religion, consumption, and material culture. She examines how these structures and activities changed over time, highlighting key developments that defined eras, such as the growth of cities or the creation of a global trading network. The book makes comparisons and generalizations, but also notes diversities and particularities. This new edition includes updates to each chapter, drawing on material from the history of the emotions, Indigenous history, material culture studies, and the history of sexuality. Wiesner-Hanks also expands discussions of climate and the environment, and examines the matters that are at the heart of big questions in world history today.
Brief description: Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks is Distinguished Professor of History Emerita at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She is the long-time senior editor of the Sixteenth Century Journal, editor-in-chief of the seven-volume Cambridge World History (2015), and co-editor, with Mathew Kuefler, of the four-volume Cambridge World History of Sexualities (2024). She is the author or editor of many articles and forty books that have appeared in ten European and Asian languages.
Review Quotes: 'Few authors have the courage to write a short history of the long human career, and fewer still have the skill to pull it off. Merry Wiesner-Hanks succeeds admirably in fashioning an intelligible story out of the seeming chaos of history. Her book is unique among world histories in the extent of its attention to gender, marriage, family, inequality, and other social themes.' John McNeill, author of The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History