Books for course use

Books on global topics, written by experts but designed for student engagement in social studies, science, literature, and language classes. Some titles are used for professional development. Available in print and as ebooks.

  • In this revised and updated edition, China expert Kerry Brown provides insightful answers to today’s questions about the world’s newest superpower. Beyond that, This Is China provides an engaging historical and cultural overview, as a framework for understanding China's meteoric rise and the complex challenges of the post-COVID-19 world. With all this in little more than 100 pages, This Is China is the shortest expert-written introduction to both historic and contemporary China. Listen to the podcast.
  • Prize-winning historian David Christian takes us on a fascinating journey, telling the story of the universe and history of humanity in only 102 pages. We start with the Big Bang, move on to the earliest era of human foragers, then learn about to the invention of agriculture and the spread of humans around the world. We finally arrive in the twenty-first century, the Anthropocene epoch. This popular book, now in its sixth printing, was designed for students and also includes an appendix about AP World History Teacher’s Guide by Bob Bain and Lauren McArthur Harris.. There are numerous “Thought Experiments” guaranteed to spark discussion about the past, present, and future. Welcome to This Fleeting World.
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  • Big History, Small World: From the Big Bang to You blends history and science in the unique approach called "big history" and is designed for high-school students. Cynthia Stokes Brown takes a humanistic approach to material that includes meteorology, astronomy, chemistry and physics, and cell biology. This provides an ideal introduction for any reader intrigued by this rich blend of history and science. In the first chapter, Brown discusses the scientific method. In the last chapter she discusses the different ways people interpret big history and find meaning in it. The other ten chapters are based on eight major turning points, or thresholds, in the cosmic story.  
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    10-19 copies20% off (normally 10%)
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  • The Way of Eating: Yuan Mei`s Manual of Gastronomy (the Suiyuan Shidan) is, remarkably, the first translation into English of one of the world's most famous books about food. It is a treatise, cookbook, and memoir written in the late eighteenth century by the Qing dynasty poet Yuan Mei. It is the little sister edition of Berkshire's bilingual academic version of the book, which is published as Recipes from the Garden of Contentment. It includes recipes for well-known dishes such as birds nest and sharks fin, and offers modern readers an appealing perspective on Chinese history and culinary culture, and was translated and annotated by Sean J. S. Chen with editorial advice from E. N. Anderson and Jeffrey Riegel. This edition is in English only but it includes and explains some important Chinese terms. It's a unique introduction to the true cuisines of China, designed for readers interested in the social history of food as well as in techniques and recipes. The editorial team’s aim was to convey the charm, humor, and erudition of one of China’s greatest writers. Chinese food expert Nicole Mones, author of the novel The Last Chinese Chef, has contributed an engaging introduction to Yuan Mei and his work. “This is far more than a cookbook: "The Way of Eating is food history at its finest, a window into a fascinating and long-lost world.” Ruth Reichl, former editor of Gourmet magazine and author of Save Me the Plums.
  • This Is America: A Short History of the United States offers a unique guide to the United States of America, a nation that in recent history has been the most affluent, influential, and powerful on Earth, known for innovation as well as for its belief in its own “exceptionalism.” This book will give US citizens and people elsewhere a more nuanced view of the "beautiful country."
  • Becoming a Dragon: Forty Chinese Proverbs, is a bilingual (English-Chinese) collection of proverbs, popular phrases, and two-part allegorical sayings, designed for self-study and classroom teaching. Each proverb comes with the story behind the proverb and its source in both English and Chinese, a literal translation, the figurative meaning, an English equivalent, a vocabulary list, and examples of how the proverb is used in modern written and spoken Chinese.
  • This Is China: The First 5,000 Years contains, in brief, everything we need to know about 5,000 years of history, 30 years of “opening,” and a future that promises to shape the 21st century for all of us.
  • This Is Islam presents a lively introduction to a religion that has a dramatic history and plays a crucial role in the world today.
  • This Fleeting World is the smallest book of big history, telling the story of the universe and history of humanity in less than one hundred pages. Prize-winning historian David Christian covers it all in this compact, accessible, and inspiring guide to the history of everything, from stars and empires to cities, the World Wide Web, capitalism, and globalization. (If you are looking for the edition designed for AP World History and other courses, please visit this page.)
  • World History Teaching in Asia is the first broad survey of the content and approaches used to teach world history in secondary schools and colleges in Asia.
  • Women and Leadership: History, Concepts, and Case Studies provides valuable research by experts on leadership and women’s history to help students and citizens who want a more nuanced explanation of what we know about women as leaders – and about how they have led in different fields, in different parts of the world, and in past centuries.
  • An Overview of Our Impact on Planet Earth and the Natural Forces Shaping Our Future

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