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A second way we have chosen to help students identify and absorb major developments is by adding and refining signposts to guide student reading. Most notably, we have added new chapter- opening focus questions. Posed at the end of the opening vignettes, these single questions encapsulate the essence of the era covered in the chapter and guide students toward the core message of the chapter. To further help students as they read, we have worked hard to ensure that chapter and sec- tion overviews outline the central points of each section in the clearest manner possible. In addi- tion, we have condensed some material to better illuminate key ideas.

A third way we have made this book more useful is by adding a special feature called Seeing History. We know that today’s students are at- tuned to visual sources of information, yet they do not always receive systematic instruction in how to “read” or think critically about such sources. Similarly, we know instructors often wish to use visual evidence as the basis of class discussion but do not have materials appropriate for introduc- tory students readily at hand. We have crafted our Seeing History features to address these needs. Each single-page Seeing History feature contains a pair of images — such as paintings, sculpture, photographs, and artifacts — accompanied by back- ground information and probing questions designed to guide students through the process of reading images as historical evidence and to help them explore different perspectives and significant historical developments.

Finally, as always, we have incorporated the latest scholarly findings throughout the book so that students and instructors alike have a text that they can confidently rely on. In the third edition, we have included new and updated discussions of topics such as the demography of the later Roman republic and its effect on social change, the social and political causes of the Great Famine of the early fourteenth century, the emergence of the plague in Europe, the development of new slave- trading routes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the refugee crisis following World War II, and the enlargement of the European Union, among others.

Aided by a fresh and welcoming design, new pedagogical aids, and new multimedia offerings that give students and instructors interactive tools for study and teaching, we believe we have created a new edition even more suited to today’s Western civilization courses. In writing The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, we have aimed to com-

municate the vitality and excitement as well as the fundamental importance of history. Students should be enthused about history; we hope we have conveyed some of our own enthusiasm and love for the study of history in these pages.

Pedagogy and Features

We know from our own teaching that students need all the help they can get in absorbing and making sense of information, thinking analytically, and understanding that history itself is debated and con- stantly revised.With these goals in mind,we retained the class-tested learning and teaching aids that worked well in the first and second editions, but we have also done more to help students distill the central story of each age and give them more opportunities to develop their own historical skills.

The third edition incorporates more aids to help students sort out what is most important to learn while they read. New chapter focus ques- tions guide them toward the central themes of the era and the most significant information they should take away from their reading. Boldface key terms have been updated to concentrate on likely test items and have been expanded to include people. To help students read and study, the key terms and people are defined in a new running glossary at the bottom of pages and collected in a comprehensive glossary at the end of the book.