A Concise History of the World since 1945 States and Peoples

W.M. Spellman explores the past half century focusing on key topics such as human migration, science and technology, international business, religion and politics, and the break-up of Europe's overseas empires. Two central points of debate are examined: the struggle between centralized socialism and free-market capitalism and the interaction between the forces of cultural fragmentation and the competing integrative forces of "globalization" or world culture.

W.M. SPELLMAN is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. His publications include The Global Community: Migration and the Making of the Modern World, 1500-2000 (2002) and the co-authored volume The West: Culture and Ideas (2003).