This book makes a unique and timely contribution to world/global historical studies and related fields. It places essential world historical frameworks by top scholars in the field today in clear, direct relation to and conversation with one other, offering them opportunity to enrich, elucidate and, at times, challenge one another. It thereby aims to: (1) offer world historians opportunity to critically reflect upon and refine their essential interpretational frameworks, (2) facilitate more effective and nuanced teaching and learning in and beyond the classroom, (3) provide accessible world historical contexts for specialized areas of historical as well as other fields of research in the humanities, social sciences and sciences, and (4) promote comparative historiographical critique which (a) helps identify continuing research questions for the field of world history in particular, as well as (b) further global peace and dialogue in relation to varying views of our ever-increasingly interconnected, interdependent, multicultural, and globalized world and its shared though diverse and sometimes contested history.

R. Charles Weller is Clinical Assistant Professor in the Roots of Contemporary Issues World History& Asia Programs at Washington State University, USA, and a non-residential Visiting Researcher at Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

Foreword:Peter Stearns.-Preface& Acknowledgements: R. Charles Weller.-List of Contributors.- SECTION ONE: Historical Background.-1- Grand Narrative and New World Histories: Their Historical, Social and Political Challenges and Contributions., R. Charles Weller.- 2- The Continuing Equivocation of 'Western' and 'White Civilization': White Nationalism and Eurocentrism at the Crossroads., R. Charles Weller.-SECTION TWO: 21st-Century Narratives of World History.-3- Periodization in World History: Challenges and Opportunities., Peter Stearns.- 4- Complexity, Energy and Information in Big History and Human History, David Christian.-5- History beyond Humanity: between Big and Deep History., Felipe Fernandez-Armesto.- 6- The Human System: An Introduction., Patrick Manning.- 7- World History from a Social and Cultural Perspective., Merry Wiesner-Hanks.- 8- World History as a Single Story., Tamim Ansary.- 9- The West, Russia, and Islam from a World Civilizations Vantage., Tursin Gabitov.- 10- "Going Global: Thematic Explorations in World History.", Candice Goucher.-SECTION THREE: Comparative Historiographical Critiques.-11- World History and Perspectivity: between necessity and opportunity., Gotelind Müller.- 12- World Histories in Conversation., Leonid Trofimov.- 13- Eight World Historians., Diego Olstein.- 14- Other 21st-Century Narratives of World History from Around the Globe., R. Charles Weller.-Concluding Reflections:A Way Forward: Grand Narrative World History as Specialization?, R. Charles Weller.-Appendix: The Politics of Difference in World, R. Charles Weller,Historical Study (Table).