Worlds Together, Worlds Apart

Dear Faculty and Graduate Student Colleagues,
You are cordially invited to a discussion with Stephen Aron (UCLA), a co-author of a new world history textbook. The event will be on Monday, May 19, in HSSB 4041, noon-1 or 2 p.m.

The background: For 2c I am using one of the most recent world history textbooks, which has just come out in a second edition. It was originally created by a team at Princeton, and has now expanded the collaboration for a much expanded second edition. Unique is that the collaborative work was interactive, not additive, namely the chapters were drafted by multiple people and discussed by all (or most).

The book is: Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (W.W. Norton, 2002, 2008), by Tignor, Adelman, Aron, Brown, Elman, Kotkin, Liu, Marchand, Pittman, Prakash, Shaw, Tsin.
You can find out more about it at (menu items down the left side–esp. authors and contents are informative):
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/titles/history/wtwa2/
The first edition site also gives overviews of what are now chaps. 10-21:
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/worlds/index/welcome.htm

The publisher is sponsoring co-author Steve Aron from UCLA to come to UCSB to discuss with me and my Hist 2c TAs what we like and dislike about the book, and answer our questions about some of the decisions they made in putting the book together. Since there is a large group of us in this department with an interest in World History, as well as a number of textbook authors, I’d like to invite anyone interested to attend as well. I’m thinking of it as an informal brown-bag type event, and I’ll organize some snacks.

contact Harold Marcuse if you have any questions.

jwil 28.iv.08