World History, Volume 2: From 1400 Volume 2

Reviewed by William Burns, Professorial Lecturer, The George Washington University on 11/20/23

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

Would have liked to see more on premodern China and there was virtually nothing on pre-Columbian America. Came off somewhat Eurocentric despite the author's efforts to avoid that--a whole subchapter on the Protestant Reformation but nothing on reformist movements in Islam such as Wahhabism, which doesn't even appear in the index . (Even in Christianity, the big religious story of the early modern period in world history terms is the globalization of Catholicism, which the book almost entirely misses. It's not even mentioned when the Jesuits are introduced!) Generally coverage of religious history after the early modern period is poor to non-existent, a common problem of world history textbooks. Glossary and index were exhaustive and useful although some of the glossary items would have benefited from the inclusion of dates. Also a lot of things are indexed under "The" that shouldn't be, eg "Ottoman Empire" and "The Ottoman Empire" are indexed separately. This harms the effectiveness of the index.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

I didn't see any errors.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

Pretty up to date. I would recommend more of a focus on climate change and its social effects such as war and population movements rather than treating it as one of a number of environmental issues. Obviously the last chapter will continue to have further events added as they happen (such as the current Gaza war) and will eventually have to be broken up, requiring a rethinking of the fifteen chapter structure. However, the current thematic arrangement should continue to work to organize subsequent events up to a point.
Of course the "links to learning" will be subject to link rot and teachers should test them before assigning them.

Clarity rating: 5

Seemed pretty clear. Sentences and paragraphs were well-organized.

Consistency rating: 3

Structurally, it's really not consistent. The three main sections are organized on different principles. The first regional, the second a blend of regions and themes, and the last by global chronological periods and an obsession with war. This kind of organization is fairly common in world history textbooks and aligns with the way a lot of people teach the world history survey, but could stand to be rethought. The first main section would be particularly difficult for me to break up into weekly assignments as I prefer more thematic and global organization.

Modularity rating: 5

Very modular, which is helpful given the chronological problems discussed below.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 2

The book is full of odd chronological choices, perhaps the oddest being the placement of a chapter on European colonization in the Americas going back to the original Spanish conquests in Part II, supposedly covering the period 1750-1914. This means the discussion of colonization actually follows the discussion of Atlantic slavery, which is in Part I. Teachers using it should carefully evaluate how it fits with the rest of their course, and not necessarily follow the sequence of chapters.

Interface rating: 5

I had no problems with the interface. I use a computer, might work differently on a phone.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

Didn't see any.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

Didn't see anything that struck me as offensive, although I'm an old white guy and not the most sensitive. The Eurocentrism might bother some people but isn't unusual in a world history textbook.

Comments

Huge improvement on the previous world history OER textbook.