The New World History

Ross E. Dunn is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He has served as president of the World History Association and is Director of World History Projects at the National Center for History in the Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles. He currently directs the center’s World History for Us All project, a Web-based model curriculum for world history in middle and high schools. He has written books and articles on North African, Islamic, and world history, including The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, a Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century (Second Edition, 2004) and is senior author of Links Across Time and Place, a world history textbook for high school students. As one of the historians who outlined teaching goals for world history in high schools, Dunn was at the center of the culture wars debate over the National Standards for World History (1994). He and coauthors Gary B. Nash and Charlotte Crabtree wrote about their experiences with the standards in History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past (1997). In 2010 he coauthored World History: The Big Eras with Edmund Burke III and David Christian. This slim volume presents a sweeping survey of the human past focusing on large-scale patterns of change.