A cohesive, single-author world history built around the webs of interaction that stitched together regions and over time, the globe.

J. R. McNeill is a professor of history at Georgetown University. He is the author of award-winning works in world and environmental history. These include The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History (co-authored with his father and world history pioneer, William H. McNeill), and Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World, both published by Norton. McNeill is a recent past president of the American Historical Association.