This book provides exciting, new and wide-ranging surveys of the important themes of world history. Each theme is examined over a broad period of time allowing analysis of continuities and change, and introduces students to historians' methods and debates in their context. Preface, Introduction: Childhood in World History, Childhood in Agricultural Societies: The First Big Changes, Childhood in the Classical Civilizations, Childhood in Postclassical World History: The Impact of Religious Change, Contacts and Contrasts in the Postclassical World, Foces of Change and the Modern Model of Childhood: Developments in the West and Eighteenth Century to 1914, Alongside the Modern Model: The Pressures of Colonialism, Modern Childhood in Asia: Japan Adapts the New Model, Childhood and Communist Revolutions, Childhood in the Affluent Societies and Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, The Dislocations in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Children Face War and Violence, Globalization and Childhoods, The Dillema of Children's Happiness, Conclusion: Childhoods from Past Toward Future, References, Index.