How to Use This Book

History and Life has been organized to make it easy to use. Chapters follow a regular structure you can depend on. A Map Lesson and a special feature — What's in a Name? — appear in every chapter. Other special features, such as Geography — A Key to History, occur regularly throughout the text. The Table of Contents, Atlas and Reference Section, Glossary, and Index can help you find what you want to know.

The Units
The nine units of History and Life correspond to well-defined historical periods. The unit introduction gives an overview of the main ideas in the unit. Time lines show you the chronology of events in the chapters within a unit; you can see when events in one chapter happened in relation to events in the other chapters. At the end of each unit is a test you can use to check your understanding of the material in the unit.

The Chapters . . ,
Below are the first and last pages of typical chapters. All chapters have the same elements: A a chapter numeral, title, and time span of events, B a chapter introduction, C a list of the sections of the chapter, D section headings, and E subsection headings. The section and subsection headings together make a sentence outline of the main ideas in a chapter. Another common element in each chapter is the feature called "What's in a Name?" As in F, it tells the origin of a content word in that chapter.
World history includes many foreign place names and proper names. Wherever one occurs in text, it will be followed by its pronunciation. Page 111 below gives pronunciations for Tacitus [tas'a tus] and Tiber [ti'ber]. In addition, world history has its own vocabulary — words that have specific meanings related to concepts under discussion. On page 111, Pax Romana is defined. Vocabulary words are defined in text right after their first use, and they appear in the glossary.

End-of-Chapter Material
Every chapter ends with two pages like the ones shown here of Chapter 12. In G, paragraphs summarize the chapter, section by section; H asks you to recall the important terms, people, events and dates in the chapter; I gives questions that call for in-depth thinking about the main ideas; J suggests activities to help you learn more about the material in the chapter, and K is a short chapter quiz.

The Map Program
Each chapter contains a Map Lesson that will help you develop your map reading skills as well as learning where events occurred. Each Map Lesson has questions for you to answer. There are more than 112 maps in the text, including detailed reference maps and other information in the 30-page Atlas and Reference Section.

Geography: A Key to History
In order to understand why civilization developed in a certain way in a certain place, it is often necessary to understand geographic aspects of the place. There are 10 full-page essays, each with a map that explains some aspect of geography that has affected history.

Someone You Should Know
World history is filled with interesting people who have led exciting lives. Some of these people are described in more detail in special biography features.

Points of Interest
Many of the places talked about in this book are still in existence today. Full-page illustrated essays tell you some things you would learn if you had the chance to visit one of these places yourself.

A Mystery in History
Historians are like detectives. They seek clues in government records, diaries, news-papers, ballads, paintings, and objects that lie buried in the ground. Sometimes vital clues are missing. One page in each unit sets forth a historical mystery with its clues and interpretations.