Contemporary World History

A comprehensive and balanced history of the world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, William Duiker's book not only chronicles the key events in the revolutionary twentieth century, but also examines the underlying issues that have shaped the times. CONTEMPORARY WORLD HISTORY, 5e, takes a global approach to the subject while doing justice to the distinct character of individual civilizations and regions. Duiker integrates political, economic, social, and cultural history, creating a chronologically ordered synthesis that gives students the true flavor of the most decisive moments in recent world history.

William J. Duiker is liberal arts professor emeritus of East Asian studies at The Pennsylvania State University. A former U.S. diplomat with service in Taiwan, South Vietnam, and Washington, D.C., he received his doctorate in Far Eastern history from Georgetown University in 1968, where his dissertation dealt with the Chinese educator and reformer Cai Yuanpei. At Penn State, he has written widely on the history of Vietnam and modern China, including the widely acclaimed THE COMMUNIST ROAD TO POWER IN VIETNAM (Revised Edition, Westview Press, 1996), which was selected for a Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award in 1982-1983 and 1996-1997. Other recent books include CHINA AND VIETNAM: THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT (Berkeley, 1987), SACRED WAR: NATIONALISM AND REVOLUTION IN A DIVIDED VIETNAM (McGraw-Hill, 1995), and HO CHI MINH (Hyperion, 2000), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2001. While his research specialization is in the field of nationalism and Asian revolutions, his intellectual interests are considerably more diverse. He has traveled widely and has taught courses on the History of Communism and non-Western civilizations at Penn State, where he was awarded a Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the spring of 1996.