Crossroads and Cultures, Volume B: 500-1750: A History of the World's Peoples
 Bonnie G. Smith (PhD, University of Rochester) is Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University. She has written numerous works in European and global history, includingLadies of the Leisure Class;Changing Lives: Women in European History since 1700; andImperialism. She is editor ofGlobal Feminisms since 1945andWomen’s History in Global Perspective; coeditor of the New Oxford World History series; and general editor ofThe Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History.  Currently she is studying the globalization of European culture and society since the seventeenth century.  Marc Van De Mieroop (PhD, Yale University) is Professor of History at Columbia University. His research focuses on the ancient history of the Near East from a long-term perspective and extends across traditionally established disciplinary boundaries. Among his many works areThe Ancient Mesopotamian City;Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History;A History of the Ancient Near East;The Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of Ramesses II; andA History of Ancient Egypt.  Richard von Glahn (PhD, Yale University) is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. A specialist in Chinese economic history, Richard is the author ofThe Country of Streams and Grottoes:Expansion, Settlement, and the Civilizing of the Sichuan Frontier in Song Times;Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000–1700; andThe Sinister Way: The Divine and the Demonic in Chinese Religious Culture. He is also coeditor ofThe Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese HistoryandGlobal Connections and Monetary History, 1470–1800. His current research focuses on monetary history on a global scale, from ancient times to the recent past. Kris Lane (PhD, University of Minnesota) is the France V. Scholes Chair in Colonial Latin American History at Tulane University. Kris specializes in colonial Latin American history and the Atlantic world, and his great hope is to globalize the teaching and study of the early Americas. His publications includePillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500–1750;Quito 1599: City and Colony in Transition; andColour of Paradise: The Emerald in the Age of Gunpowder Empires. He also edited Bernardo de Vargas Machuca’sThe Indian Militia and Description of the Indies and Defense and Discourse of the Western Conquest.