William H. McNeill

William McNeill was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the son of theologian and educator John T. McNeill, where he lived until age ten. The family then moved to Chicago, while spending summers on a family farm on Canada's Prince Edward Island. After the war, he returned to Cornell for his Ph.D., which he earned in 1947. ==Career==

Teaching In 1947, McNeill began teaching at the University of Chicago, where he remained throughout his teaching career. He chaired the university's Department of History from 1961 to 1967, establishing its international reputation. During his tenure as chair, he recruited Henry Moore to cast a bronze statue called Nuclear Energy commemorating the University of Chicago as the place where the world's first manmade nuclear chain reaction took place in 1942. In 1988, he was a visiting professor at Williams College, where he taught a seminar on The Rise of the West. He has stated that teaching "is the most wonderful way to learn things". The book explored world history in terms of the effect different old world civilizations had on one another, and cites the deep influence of Western civilization on the rest of the world to argue that societal contact with foreign civilizations is the primary force in driving historical change. It had a major impact on historical theory by emphasizing cultural fusions, in contrast to Oswald Spengler's view of discrete, independent civilizations. Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote a glowing review in The New York Times Book Review. From 1971 to 1980, he served as the editor of The Journal of Modern History. His Plagues and Peoples (1976), was an important early contribution to the study of the impact of disease on human history. In 1982, he published The Pursuit of Power, which examined the role of military forces, military technology, and war in human history. In 1989, he published a biography of his mentor Arnold J. Toynbee. In 2003, he coauthored ''The Human Web: A Bird's-eye View of World History'' with his son and fellow historian J. R. McNeill. ==Awards and honours==

In addition to being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and winning the U.S. National Book Award in History and Biography in 1964 for The Rise of the West, McNeill received several other awards and honours. In 1985, he served as president of the American Historical Association. He received the Quantrell Award. In February 2010, President Barack Obama, a former University of Chicago instructor himself, awarded McNeill the 2009 National Humanities Medal to recognize "his exceptional talent as a teacher and scholar at the University of Chicago and as an author of more than 20 books, including The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963), which traces civilizations through 5,000 years of recorded history". He wrote more than 20 books. ==Personal life==

In 1946, McNeill married Elizabeth Darbishire, whom he met during his military service during World War II as an assistant military attaché to the Greek and Yugoslavian governments-in-exile in Cairo. McNeill himself died in July 2016 at the age of 98 at Torrington, Connecticut. ==Works==

• (1947). • (1949). History of Western Civilization: A Handbook. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 6th edition, 1986. . • (1953) America, Britain and Russia, Their Co-operation and Conflict, 1941–1946, Oxford University Press, under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, reprinted by Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1970 • (1954) Past and Future. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. • "The Introduction of the Potato into Ireland," The Journal of Modern History Vol. 21, No. 3, September 1949 • (1963). The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Revised edition, 1991. . • (1964). ''Europe's Steppe Frontier: 1500–1800''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. • (1973). The Ecumene: Story of Humanity. Harper & Row. • (1974). The Shape of European History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. • (1974). Venice: The Hinge of Europe, 1081–1797. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . • (1976). Plagues and Peoples. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday. . • (1978). The Metamorphosis of Greece Since World War II . (University of Chicago Press). • (1979). • (1980). The Human Condition: An Ecological and Historical View. Princeton: Princeton University Press. • (1982). The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. • (1984). "Command vs market: Across the centuries", In: Craig. E. Aronoff, John L. Ward, dir. "The Future of Private Enterprise", Vol 1, Atlanta: Georgia State University, pp. 81–94 • (1989). Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. • (1991). ''Hutchins' University. A Memoir of the University of Chicago. 1929–1950''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. • (1992). The Global Condition: Conquerors, Catastrophes, & Community. Princeton: Princeton University Press. • (1995). Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. • (1998). A World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 4th edition. (First published 1967). • (2003). ''The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History'' (with J. R. McNeill). New York: W. W. Norton. • (2005). Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History (with Jerry H. Bentley, David Christian et al., editors). 5 volumes. Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire Publishing Group. . • (2005). ''The Pursuit of Truth: A Historian's Memoir''. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. • (2009). Summers Long Ago: On Grandfather's Farm and in Grandmother's Kitchen. Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire Publishing Group. . • (2011). Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History, 2nd Edition (with Jerry H. Bentley, David Christian et al., editors). 6 volumes. Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire Publishing Group. . ==References==