Included in this set are milestones in the geopolitics of the era - from the Thirty Years' War to the War of the League of Augsburg; from Europeans' arrival in Australia to the establishment of the Louisiana Colony. Also essays address key social developments in daily life: the practice of birth control; the popularization of New World imports such as tobacco, coffee, and chocolate; the establishment of Tokyo's "Floating World" district; the ineradicable devastation of the Middle Passage and African American slavery.