The Western Civilization CD-ROM is a huge library of 3936 images, each with a descriptive caption, plus film clips, maps and sound recordings, all organized in a unique, flexible format which makes it possible for you to explore the history of Western civilization from prehistoric times into the 1990s.

• Description
• Table of Contents
• Video Introduction

You can use the CD-ROM for independent study and research, pursuing your own interests at your own pace. You can also use it to create presentations to be shown on your computer screen, or on your classroom TV screen. Here are some of its features:

The Image Library. This CD-ROM contains an extraordinarily rich library of 3936 images. Each image has its own caption (description) which explains the image and places it in its historical context. The images have been chosen from 107 libraries and archives in the U.S. and Europe. They include historical events and personages; ruins, statues and artifacts from ancient civilizations; hundreds of paintings and other works of art; plus cartoons, posters, and 100 maps, all selected to be compatible with leading textbooks. Each Section of the CD-ROM includes an Overview, a sound-and-image video summary of the history of that period, which can be used to introduce the period and to review it after its study has been completed.

The CD-ROM contains dozens of brief sound bytes which are embedded in the captions. You can hear Sigmund Freud discussing psychoanalysis, or British King Edward VIII giving his abdication speech, or Rudyard Kipling at the Royal Society of St. George, or many other sound recordings.

There are many motion picture sequences, ranging from Czar Nicholas to the Beatles, which can be viewed on your computer screen whenever you wish, and can be selected for inclusion in any presentation you may create.

If you wish, the CD-ROM will quiz you on what you’ve learned from the pictures and captions. You may choose Basic, Intermediate or Advanced questions. After you answer a question, you can go immediately to the caption which contains the answer, and review your response. The Quiz keeps your running score. There is also the Historipix Game, which allows you to test what you’ve read and what you’ve seen.

This CD-ROM makes it possible for you to create a presentation and either play it back on your computer, or show it on your classroom TV screen by using the Second Edition of the Western Civilization Videodisc. This is possible because the CD-ROM and the videodisc contain the same images and film clips.

The way you select images and captions for a presentation is simple. As you move through the CD-ROM and find an item you want to include, you just click in a box to include it in your selections. You can use the Index to find not only individual images, but also groups of images with which you can prepare separate presentations on many subjects, such as Agriculture, or Transportation. In addition, the Find function will quickly search the entire CD-ROM for a particular word, person or event.

By using the Related Items feature, you will see a list of the categories into which a particular image falls. French novelist George Sand, for example, is related to Feminists, Literature, Novelists, Society and the Theater. This powerful research tool also helps students to think in categories, classifying an item by its relationship to others.

You can add your own digitized pictures (or pictures from other sources), write captions for them, and sort them with the CD-ROM’s images in any way you wish. You can thus create your own unique collection of Western Civilization images and captions, for display on your computer screen.

When you have chosen images and captions for a report or a lecture, you can revise your copies of the selected captions, and put them in any desired order. You can then print them out as a lecture script. It can include a barcode for each caption, which will call that videodisc image to the classroom TV screen.

This vast library of interesting images and captions is contained on just one CD-ROM. Your students will enjoy working with it, and they will achieve a better, more lasting understanding of the history of Western civilization.

• Introduction
• Early Human Development
• Mesopotamian Civilizations
• Ancient Egypt
• Hebrew History

• The First European Civilizations: Minoan and Mycenean
• Archaic Greece
• Athens: Source of Unity and Disunity
• Hellenistic Civilization

• Before Rome: the Etruscans
• The Roman Republic, 509-31 B.C.
• The Roman Empire, 31 B.C. to 500 A.D.: Building a World-State
• The Spread of Christianity
• Byzantium, 565-1000
• The Final Days of the Roman Empire in the West: Germanic Invasions

• The Foundations of a New Civilization
• Anglo-Saxon England, 500-1066
• The Work of the Monasteries in Creating the Medieval Civilization
• Life in the Middle Ages
• Pilgrims and Crusades
• Islam
• Islamic Spain, 711-1492
• Protected Living in an Age of Conflict: The Medieval Castle
• The First Christian Churches

• The Kings of Europe
• The Medieval City
• The Poor, the Sick, and the Dying
• Two Impregnable Walled Cities: Avila and Carcassonne
• The Mind of the Middle Ages
• The Pilgrimage: Piety, Travel, Commerce
• The Kings of Europe in the 14th and 15th Centuries
• The Hundred Years’ War, 1337-1453
• Medieval Art

• The Italian Renaissance: A Beginning in Florence
• Distinguishing Marks of the Italian Renaissance
• Political Realism: Machiavelli
• Civic Pride in the Italian Renaissance
• Florence Leads the Way
• Other Renaissance Cities
• The Papal States
• Venice: the City on Water
• Other Islands
• The Plague
• Renaissance Theater and Music
• Renaissance Painters and Sculptors

• The French Renaissance
• The German Hapsburgs: Charles V
• The Spanish Hapsburgs: Philip II
• Renaissance Warfare
• The Reformation
• The Counter-Reformation
• The English Reformation
• Denmark, Russia and the Turks
• The Age of Discovery

• The Splendor of Absolute Monarchy: France
• England, 1603-1714
• Spain and the Low Countries
• Wars in Europe
• Colonization
• The Religions of the Times
• Science and Technology
• Daily Life of the People
• Literature and Music
• Baroque Art
• In Other Lands

• Introduction
• European Conflicts Overseas
• Great Britain, 1714-1820
• The French Revolution
• The Napoleonic Era, 1799-1815

• Introduction
• Liberalism: Liberty and Equality
• England Abolishes Slavery
• Liberal Political Revolutions, 1830-1848
• The Industrial Revolution
• Science
• Literature, Theater and Society

• Nation Building, 1850-1871
• The New Imperialism
• Revolutions: Effects of Industrialization
• National Socio-Political Revolutions
• Finance, Technology and Transportation
• The Urban Revolution
• The Arts

• Monarchs and Political Leaders
• World War I
• The Easter Uprising In Ireland
• The Russian Revolution

• Political and Social Turmoil in Central and Eastern Europe
• Germany’s Weimar Republic
• Preventing Future Wars: International Organizations and Treaties
• Postwar Great Britain
• Postwar France
• Postwar Italy
• Spain: The Republican Revolution and Civil War, 1931-1939
• Nazi Germany
• The March to World War II
• Science and Technology
• Transportation
• Arts and People

• The War in Europe
• The Battle of Britain
• The War at Sea
• The Eastern Front
• The U.S. Enters the War
• War in Africa
• The Invasion of Italy
• The Beginning of the End
• The Holocaust
• War in Asia and the Pacific
• Japan’s Final Days
• The War Crimes Trials

• First Steps to a New World, 1945-1960
• Toward Today’s World: To 1960 and Beyond
• Shaping the Future: the 1990s

Windows and Macintosh - Quicktime Movie - Screen size 640x480

General Introduction - IRCWCCD.MOV (6.0Mb)
 

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