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By investigating the major changes in world history during the past 500 years, this book explains to what extent world forces have been responsible for shaping both the past and the present. This book tells of the rise and fall of empires and civilizations, and recounts the growing communality and interdependence of nations. It shows how so many problems of the contemporary world are the legacy of an unprecedented era of western domination - the end of which was hastened by the two world wars. In explaining how the world has come to be what it is, the book examines the implications surrounding the end of the Cold War, the unravelling of communism in Eastern Europe, and the growing challenge of the non-western world to western superiority. It is the author's belief that we have reached a transitional stage in world history in which the world will no longer be shaped by the single image of western modernism, but increasingly by the image of all cultures and civilizations. With the shift of geopolitical and geoeconomic power to Asia, and with the growing worldwide influence of religious fundamentalism and revolutionary nationalism, the need for a global perspective has become acute.