This is the most engaging and cutting-edge survey of the world available today. Beginning with the origins of humanity up to our current times, this leading group of world historians tells the history of the world through a series of transformative stories: "Out of Africa," the "Axial Age," the building of the Silk Road, the rise of the world's major universalising religions, the expansion of the Mongol Empire, the Black Death, the Spread of New World Silver, the Slave Trade, the Atlantic Revolutions, Nineteenth-Century Alternative Visions, Nations and Empires, Masses and Modernity, the Three-World Order, and Contemporary Globalism. Throughout they argue that the world can best be viewed as a struggle of people's becoming more integrated as the world comes together through increased trade, warfare, and cultural exchange, while they also exhibit the strong desire for their world to stand apart and maintain its own traditional identity. Worlds Together, Worlds Apart is guaranteed to challenge conventional notions about the role of the West in our larger world history.