Perspectives from the Past: Primary Sources in Western Civilizations: From the Ancient Near East through the Age of Absolutism (Fifth Edition)  (Vol. 1)
James M. Brophy is associate  professor of modern European history at the  University of Delaware. He received his B.A.  from Vassar College and did his graduate  training at the Universität Tübingen and Indiana University, where he specialized in the social  and political history of nineteenth-century  Europe. He is the author of Capitalism,  Politics, and Railroads in Prussia,  1830—1870 (1998).Joshua Cole (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley) is Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research focuses on gender and the history of population sciences, colonial violence, and the politics of memory in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France, Germany, and Algeria. His first book was The Power of Large Numbers: Population, Politics, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).John Robertson received both his M.A. and his Ph.D. in ancient history from the  University of Pennsylvania. A specialist in the  social and economic history of the ancient Near  East, Professor Robertson has published several  articles in major scholarly journals and  contributed articles to such major reference  works as the recently published  Civilizations of the Ancient Near  East.Thomas Max Safley is associate  professor of history at the University of  Pennsylvania. A specialist in the economic and  social history of early modern Europe, his  particular research interests include the  history of the Reformation, the family, charity, work, and business. In addition to numerous  articles and reviews, Professor Safley is the  author of Let No Man Put Asunder: The  Control of Marriage in the German Southwest,  1550—1620 (1984) and Charity and  Economy in the Orphanages of Early Modern  Augsburg (1996).Carol Symes (Ph.D. Harvard University) is Associate Professor of History and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the history department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, where she has won the top teaching award in the College of Liberal Arts and Science. Her main areas of study include medieval Europe, especially France and England; cultural history; history of information media and communication technologies; and history of theater. Her first book was A Common Stage: Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007).