THE WEST AS A DYNAMIC TRADITION Grafton and Bell’s new history rebuilds the West as a dynamic tradition engaged in a continuing search for order across politics, society and culture. With internal tensions and global influences driving historical change, the West is always remaking itself, at times successfully and others disastrously. This strong central thread makes The West an effective teaching tool for the introductory course. THE CHRONOLOGICAL NARRATIVE CONVEYS THE PAST AS IT WAS LIVED AT THE TIME To show the West as constantly remaking itself, Grafton and Bell adopt a balanced chronological narrative that delivers the past not as a path to the present but as it was lived at the time, in motion, with all of its drama and unexpectedness intact. This approach makes the sequence of events clear for beginning students, and shows them the mutual interplay of political, social, cultural and material history. SUPPORTS THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF THE COURSE As a teaching package, The West recommits to the practical value of the Western Civilizations course, with text features, pedagogy and digital resources that combine to instill the skills long associated with history and the liberal arts: effective reading and critical thinking. The history itself supports these skills by showing how they developed as tools in the fierce competition of beliefs and ideas that drives cultural history.