World-historical questions such as these, the subjects of major works by Jared Diamond, David Landes, and others, are now of great moment as global frictions increase. In a spirited and original contribution to this quickening discussion, two renowned historians, father and son, explore the webs that have drawn humans together in patterns of interaction and exchange, cooperation and competition, since earliest times. Whether small or large, loose or dense, these webs have provided the medium for the movement of ideas, goods, power, and money within and across cultures, societies, and nations. From the thin, localized webs that characterized agricultural communities twelve thousand years ago, through the denser, more interactive metropolitan webs that surrounded ancient Sumer, Athens, and Timbuktu, to the electrified global web that today envelops virtually the entire world in a maelstrom of cooperation and competition, J. R. McNeill and William H. McNeill show human webs to be a key component of world history and a revealing framework of analysis. Avoiding any determinism, environmental or cultural, the McNeills give us a synthesizing picture of the big patterns of world history in a rich, open-ended, concise account.

約翰•R.麥剋尼爾(J. R. McNeill)，美國喬治敦大學外交事務學院曆史學教授，緻力於環境史研究，近著為《陽光下的新鮮事：20世紀環境史》。

威廉•H. 麥剋尼爾（William H. McNeill），美國芝加哥大學曆史學榮休教授。當世最著名的曆史學傢之一。因其在“歐洲科學與文化方麵的傑齣貢獻”榮獲伊拉斯謨奬。有《世界史》、《西方的興起》、《瘟疫與人》、《權力競逐》等多種名著。