List of Figures List of Maps PrefacePreface to the Third EditionNotes on References, Further Reading, and Dates 1. Foundations: The Ancient Near East1.1. Fundamentals: Prehistory and the Origins of Civilization1.2. Egypt and Mesopotamia: Government and Culture1.3. Polytheism and Monotheism1.4. Problems of Government1.5. The Near East and the Greeks: Mycenaean, Minoan, and Dark-Age Greece 2. The Greeks: Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic2.0. Introduction2.1. Fundamentals: An Agonistic Culture2.2. The Early Polis2.3. Polis or Hellas? And the Identity of the West2.4. Changes in the Polis: Archaic and Classical2.5. Athens: Archaic and Classical2.6. Sparta: Archaic and Classical2.7. Philosophers and Sophists2.8. Plato’s Republic2.9. The End of Classical Greece, and the Hellenistic World 3. Rome: From Republic to Empire3.0. Introduction3.1. Foundations: Rome’s Early History, Pietas, and the Mos Maiorum3.2. The Republic: Structure and Function3.3. Consequences of Empire I: Constituencies for Change3.4. Consequences of Empire II: The Emergence of Graeco-Roman Civilization3.5. Consequences of Empire III: The Republic Unravels3.6. Principate and Empire3.7. Rome and its Empire 4. Rome’s Fall? Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages4.1. Fundamentals: The Problem of the Fall of Rome4.2. The Crisis of the Third Century and its Resolution4.3. Christians and Romans4.4. Barbarians and Romans4.5. The Franks4.6. Islam and the West4.7. The Carolingian Empire4.8. The Collapse of the Carolingian Empire and its Aftermath, ca. 850–ca. 10504.9. A Feudal Society? The West ca. 850–ca. 1000 5. The High and Late Middle Ages5.0. Introduction5.1. Fundamentals: Christendom, Economic Growth, and a Society of Orders, Estates, and Corporations5.2. The Reform of Christendom  5.3. The West and Its Neighbors, and Western Christians and their Neighbors, in the High (and Late) Middle Ages5.4. The Rise of Government5.5. Church versus Crown in the High Middle Ages5.6. Limiting Government5.7. Reason, Nature, and the Self5.8. The Late Middle Ages: Demographic Shock and its Impact5.9. A Renaissance? 6. The Early Modern West I: The Reformation, the Great Consolidation, and the End of Christendom6.0. Introduction6.1. Fundamentals: Protestant Doctrine and the Middle Ages6.2. A Catholic Reformation?6.3. The Sexes and the Family6.4. Fragmentation and Further Reform6.5. Complications: Political and Social6.6. Political Results: The Consolidation of Royal Authority6.7. A Crisis of Authority and the End of Christendom6.8. Early Modern Western Expansion 7. Coda: The Shaping of Western Civilization SourcesIndex

“Burger’s survey covers all of the expected factual bases, but it also challenges readers to reflect on the process of history-making itself, models enquiry for them, and calls attention to the structuring limitations on our pursuit of historical knowledge: evidence never speaks of its own accord, different questions require different levels of resolution, similarities among cultures serve to heighten the contrasts, past and present ways of looking at the world may be incommensurable, historians must beware of moralizing – and all this just in the first chapter! This is a book for those instructors who believe that the goal of teaching history is not to impart knowledge but to provoke their students to a certain way of thinking.”