LAUSR

rivalry, between world history and global history in Chapter 7. At the centre of the debate between the two histories is how to study, write, and teach the chronology and periodization of globalization. The problem may very well be one of definition. But it is also one of context. Chapter 8 addresses the contextual problem. For example, the contrast between Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper’s Empires in world history: power and the politics of difference and John Darwin’s After Tamerlane: the rise and fall of global empires, 1400–2000 illustrates how the chronological divide between world history and global history is also a contextual divide. That divide can highlight long-term patterns as in the Burbank and Cooper book or it can reveal modern processes as in the Darwin book. One possible bridge over the divide is big history, which embraces all aspects of life. In Chapter 9, Olstein concludes this extended historiographical review and engaged intellectual history with a case study. He applies the four strategies and the twelve branches to the First World War. While primarily a violent argument among European industrialized powers, the conflict had a direct and indirect effect upon non-industrialized societies, communities, and peoples on land and sea. It was a world war. It was a global affair. And it was big history. At the end of the book, Olstein provides what he calls an ‘analytical bibliography’; it is a valuable and informed bibliography, which organizes global historiography into teaching and research categories. Mature students, advanced researchers, and the intellectually curious will find Thinking history globally a welcomed addition to their libraries. After all, humanity now lives in the era of the global intercommunicating zone which is the whole world.