This clearly written and engrossing book presents a global narrative of the
origins of the modern world from 1400 to the present. Unlike most studies, which
assume that the "rise of the West" is the story of the coming of the modern
world, this history, drawing upon new scholarship on Asia, Africa, and the New
World and upon the maturing field of environmental history, constructs a story
in which those parts of the world play major roles, including their impacts on
the environment. Robert B. Marks defines the modern world as one marked by
industry, the nation state, interstate warfare, a large and growing gap between
the