The Western Heritage, Volume I: To 1715 (Brief 3rd Edition)

This concise survey of Western civilization (based on the best-selling The Western Heritage, Seventh Edition), provides an exceptionally balanced survey of the political, social, and cultural development of Western civilization―its strengths and weaknesses, and the controversies surrounding it. This brief edition condenses the central narrative―without compromising on vocabulary or conceptual level―to make it more fully accessible to today's students, and to allow instructors greater opportunity to supplement the course with extensive outside readings, if desired.

Donald Kagan is Hillhouse Professor of History and Classics at Yale University, where he has taught since 1969. He received the A.B. degree in history from Brooklyn College, the M.A. in classics from Brown University, and the Ph.D. in history from Ohio State University. During 1958-1959 he studied at the American School of Classical Studies as a Fulbright Scholar. He has received three awards for undergraduate teaching at Cornell and Yale. He is the author of a history of Greek political thought, The Great Dialogue (1965); a four-volume history of the Peloponnesian war, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1969); The Archidamian War (1974); The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition (1981); The Fall of the Athenian Empire (1987); and a biography of Pericles, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (1991); and On the Origins of War (1995 ). He is coauthor, with Frederick W. Kagan of While America Sleeps (2000). With Brian Tierney and L. Pearce Williams, he is the editor of Great Issues in Western Civilization, a collection of readings.

Steven Ozment is McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History at Harvard University. He has taught Western Civilization at Yale, Stanford, and Harvard. He is the author of ten books. The Age of Reform, 1250-1550 (1980) won the Schaff Prize and was nominated for the 1981 American Book Award. Magdalena and Balthasar: An Intimate Portrait of Life in Sixteenth Century Europe (1986), Three Behaim Boys: Growing Up in Early Modern Germany (1990), Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution (1992), and The Burgermeister's Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth Century German Town (1996) were selections of the History Book Club, as is his most recent book, Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern Germany (1999).

Frank M. Turner is John Hay Whitney Professor of History at Yale University, where he served as University Provost from 1988 to 1992. He received his B.A. degree at the College of William and Mary and his Ph.D. from Yale. He has received the Yale College Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching. He has directed a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute. His scholarly research has received the support of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Center. He is the author of Between Science and Religion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England (1974), The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (1981), which received the British Council Prize of the Conference on British Studies and the Yale Press Governors Award, and Contesting Cultural Authority: Essays in Victorian Intellectual Life (1993). He has also contributed numerous articles to journals and has served on the editorial advisory boards of The Journal of Modern History, Isis, and Victorian Studies. He edited The Idea of a University, by John Henry Newman (1996). Since 1996 he has served as a Trustee of Connecticut College.

A. Daniel Frankforter is Professor of Medieval History at the Pennsylvania State University. He holds degrees from Franklin and Marshall College, Drew University, and the Pennsylvania State University, where he has taught since 1970. His books include: A History of the Christian Movement; Civilization and Survival; The Shakespeare Name Dictionary, The Medieval Millennium, An Introduction; an edition and translation of Francoise Poullain de la Barre's De l'Égalité des Deux Sexes, and Stones for Bread: A Critique of Contemporary Worship. He has received four awards for excellence in teaching and research from the Pennsylvania State University.