This book gives a brief, readable description of our common Western heritage. It covers the minimum historical information that educated adults should know within a tightly-focused narrative and interpretive structure. The joined terms "supremacies and diversities" develop major themes of conflict and creativity. "Supremacies" centers on the use of power to dominate societies, ranging from warfare to ideologies. Supremacy seeks stability, order, and incorporation. "Diversities" encompasses the creative impulse that produces new ideas, as well as people's efforts to define themselves as "different." Diversity creates change, opportunity, and individuality. These themes of historical tension and change, whether applied to political, economic, technological, social and cultural trends, offer a bridging explanatory organization.

Five other topical themes regularly inform the text: technological innovation, migration and conquest, political and economic decision-making, church and state, and disputes about the meaning of life. Various "Basic Principles" present summaries of historical realities. Primary Source Projects and Sources on Families offer students the chance to evaluate differing points of view about the past. This text is less expensive, less formal, has more attitude, yet still provides all the essentials for a course on Western Civilization.