Roger B. Beck

Understanding World Societies, Second Edition, features a brief, question-driven narrative that models for students the inquiry-based methods used by historians and helps students understand what's really important to know about world history. The second edition presents LaunchPad, a new intuitive ebook and course space with LearningCurve adaptive quizzing and a wealth of activities and assessments that help students make progress toward learning outcomes. LaunchPad features primary source activities, map and visual activities, adaptive and summative quizzing, and a wealth of optional resources, including carefully developed Online Document Projects for each chapter with auto-graded exercises. LaunchPad is easy to use and can be integrated with your school's course management system, giving you the tools for enhanced teaching and learning.

South Africa's history stretches back to the beginnings of human existence. This book provides an overview to South Africa's multiple millennia of history, covering its long and often troubled past to its current status in the 21st century. A newly revised and thoroughly updated version of a popular Greenwood publication, The History of South Africa: Second Edition provides readers with readable, accessible information on the nation's prehistory, early history and colonial past, its unfortunate apartheid era, as well as new coverage of South Africa's more recent events in the 20th and 21st centuries. This work presents unique, extended coverage of South Africa's prehistory, beginning 3.5 million years ago and incorporating information gleaned from the most recent archaeological finds. The text reflects the most current historiography on African settlement and life before the arrival of Europeans, accurately describes the colonial era as a period of European hegemony and intense African resistance, and discusses in great detail the apartheid years and the events leading up to majority rule in 1994. This second edition also includes an updated timeline, new biographical sketches of notable people, and supplies recent print and electronic resources in the bibliography.