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The Human Web: A Bird's Eye View of World History. ByJ. R. McNeill and William H. McNeill. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. xvii, 350 pp. $27.95 (cloth); $15.00 (paper). ISBN 0-393-05179-X; 0-393-92568-4.
One of the gratifying developments in the historical profession in the past two decades has been the reestablishment of world history as a worthwhile field of study, writing, and teaching. The expansion of traditional concern for Western civilization, the interaction of other cultures within the worldwide human story, and the accelerated interest in globalization, along with the insights of the historical, natural, and physical sciences-all have produced a movement that is gaining increasing momentum. William McNeill, author of the widely used volume The Rue of the West: A History of the Human Community (University of Chicago Press, 1963) and more than a dozen other monographs on aspects of world history, hinted at the themes in the present volume in his retrospective essay in the 1991 reprinting of the above-mentioned classic. Now he is joined by his son, a distinguished environmental historian, and together they survey fourteen millennia of human history in describing and explaining the relationships of human groups within their natural and cultural contexts.
The thesis of the work is that webs of influence linking human beings in relationships are central to human development, since they continually involve the communication of ideas and information....