Research Bibliography

Some helpful works for world history research. But see also – of course – our Research Databases and Links for Historical Research

Important Journals of World History

Textbooks and Synthetic Secondary Sources

  • Jeremy Black, The World in the Twentieth Century (2002) – electronic version on CONSORT
  • Pamela Kyle Crossley, Lynn Hollen Lees, John W. Servos, Global Society: The World Since 1900 (2014)
  • William R. Keylor, A World of Nations: The International Order Since 1945 (2nd ed., 2008)
  • William R. Keylor, The Twentieth-Century World and Beyond (6th ed., 2011) – 2006 edition available at Woo
  • Michael H. Hunt, The World Transformed: 1945 to the Present (2nd ed., 2014)
  • John Lukacs, A Short History of the Twentieth Century (Belknap, 2013) – electronic version on CONSORT
  • J.M. Roberts,Twentieth Century: The History of the World, 1901 to 2000 (1999) (on reserve)
  • Worlds Together, Worlds Apart. A survey of world history form early origins to the present.
  • Mel Brooks, History of the World Part 1 (1981)

Thematic Surveys

  • Rondo Cameron. A Concise Economic History of the World (Oxford, 2016) – available at Woo HC21 .N3194 2016
  • Gregory Clark, A farewell to alms : a brief economic history of the world (Princeton 2007) – available at Woo HC21 .C63 2007
  • J.R. McNeill, Something new under the sun : an environmental history of the twentieth-century world (Norton 2000) – available at Woo GF13 .M39 2000
  • Anthony N. Penna, The human footprint : a global environmental history (Wiley-Blackwell 2010) – available at Woo GF13 .P46 2010

Regional Surveys

  • Frederick Cooper, Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge, 2002)   – available at Woo DT30 .C595 2002
  • John Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America (Norton 2016)  – available at Woo F1410 .C4397 2016
  • Benjamin Keen and Keith Haynes, A History of Latin America (9th ed., Wadsworth, 2013)
  • John Keay, Midnight’s Descendants: A History of South Asia Since Partition (Basic Books 2014) – electronic version on CONSORT
  • Charles Holcombe, A history of East Asia : from the origins of civilization to the twenty-first century (Cambridge University Press, 2011) – available at Woo DS511 .H65 2011
  • Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., A Concise History of the Middle East (Westview Press, 2016) – electronic version on CONSORT
  • Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2005) – available at Woo D1051 .J84 2005

Regional Studies

  • Victor Bulmer-Thomas, The economic history of Latin America since independence (Cambridge 2014) ??
  • Shawn Miller, An environmental history of Latin America (Cambridge 2007)
  • Hafez Ghanem, The Arab Spring five years later : toward greater inclusiveness (Brookings Institution Press 2016) Woo Online Resource
  • Saskia Wieringa and Horacio Sivori, eds. The sexual history of the global South : sexual politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America (Zed Books, 2013)

For Future Reading

  • Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997)
  • William McNeill and John McNeill, The Human Web: A Bird’s Eye View of World History (2003)
  • Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (2015)
  • David Christian, This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity (2007)
  • Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2017)
  • Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2012)
  • Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (1998)