"For two centuries the Asians - from Tehran to Tokyo, from Mumbai to Shanghai - have been bystanders in world history, reacting defenselessly to the surges of Western commerce, thought, and power. That era is over. Asia is returning to the center stage it occupied for eighteen centuries before the rise of the West. Asians have absorbed and understood Western best practices in many areas, from free-market economics to the embrace of innovative science...

Beginning in the heady days just after the First Crusade, this volume-the third in the series that began with The History of the Ancient World and The History of the Medieval World-chronicles the contradictions of a world in transition. Popes continue to preach crusade, but the hope of a Christian empire comes to a bloody end at the walls of Constantinople. Aristotelian logic and Greek rationality blossom while the Inquisition gathers strength. As...