Ross E. Dunn and Laura J. Mitchell, Panorama: A World
History. New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2015. 944 pages,
illustrations, maps, index and bibliography. $154.56 (hardcover, complete). |
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It has been very difficult to achieve balance in world
history surveys, and though there are now many textbooks for undergraduate and
AP world history, produced over the past twenty years by prominent world
historians, each has its particular attractions and strengths. One of the first
authors to attempt writing a world history textbook employing the new world
history paradigm was Ross E. Dunn, in the late 1980s. Since then, he has
championed many projects to bring a global view of the world over time to survey
students. Panorama: A World History, by Ross Dunn and Laura Mitchell
strikes a balance characteristic of these efforts, between views of history and
geography at 30,000 feet and detailed views from ground level, between the
grand global view and the kind of detail that makes history interesting and
meaningful on a personal level.
Teaching students to move among the different scales at
which world history is studied is among the biggest challenges, and Panorama is like a storyteller that moves skillfully among them. The narrative flows
seamlessly from big-picture views of migration and other movements across land
and water, comparison of common phenomena, and details from well-chosen
objects, individuals, documents, and art. The most important benefit of a
global/chronological view of history is the opportunity to study interactions
among societies over time, and Panorama takes full advantage of this
strength. Instead of using a regional or civilizational frame and splicing in
coverage of interactions, Panorama's narrative integrates it throughout.
Similarly, the choices of regional and close-up topics skillfully move across
the world, revealing significant evidence of human activity at each given
period of history. The book as a whole achieves remarkable coverage
without succumbing to tokenism. Important demographic and statistical
information in simple graphic presentations illustrates major trends in human
development that complements the text and illustrative material. From the
beginning of the book to the end, the primary source material gives students a
view of history from multiple perspectives, notably including the voices of
colonized and colonizer in the modern period,
The images are compelling and beautiful, and a particular
strength of the writing is the thorough and well thought-out captioning of
images, which explain and suggest significance while raising interesting
questions for thought and discussion. While the book, at over 800 pages, must
be selectively used to accompany courses of varying length, a skillful teacher
can use it with the help of electronic support materials provided by the
publisher to shape a course that will leave students of any background well
informed about the world and likely to want to come back for more.
Susan Douglass is K-14 Education Outreach Coordinator for
the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. She is the
author of numerous curriculum units and projects, most recently coordinating
the project Our Shared Past in the Mediterranean at mediterraneansharedpast.org at the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason
University. |
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