Catalog

Western Civilization: A Concise History – Revised is an adaptation of Western Civilization: A Concise History by Christopher Brooks.  This book is an Open Educational Resource (OER) textbook published under a CC BY-NC-SA Licence. Published in 2019, with updates in 2020.

The book covers the history of Western Civilization from from the origins of civilization in Mesopotamia c. 8,000 BCE through approximately 1600. Topics include Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, the Islamic caliphates, the European Middle Ages, the Renaissance, European conquest of the Americas, and the Reformation and resulting religious wars.

Edits include the addition of chapter heading numbers, glossary terms, and other textbox materials. This text includes Ch. 1-3 from Vol 1 and 1-7 from Vol. 2 of Christopher Brooks’ original volume.

Cover Art created by Nicole V. Jobin using a cropped image from Atlas Cosmographicae by Gerardus Mercator (1595) – Wikimedia Commons.

This book is a collection of essays from the University of Colorado Boulder’s 2020 PSCI 3062 course chronicling revolutions, theorists, and their theories that have been influential since the 19th century till the present. With the set goal in mind to understand “Why man rebels?” and what key factors are universally present during a potential revolution these essays not only map out the structure of various theories and revolutionary events but also explore the symbiosis between the formulation of theories and the actual happenings during a revolution. Reading our book, one can find theorists spanning from Carl von Clausewitz and Karl Marx to Che Guevara and Chalmers Johnson. Revolution covered in our reading bridge between the more recognized revolts such as the French and Russian Revolution with the more novel events such as the Arab Spring and Euromaidan in Ukraine.