World historians should consider the cultivation of the kinds of thinking skills required to understand global relationships as one of the field's more important contributions to both knowledge and society. World history scholars, teachers, and students practice a way of thinking that can help people understand how their communities are connected with other communities around the world, and how these connections have developed historically. This is a practical style of thought that is in demand on our campuses, in our communities, and in our current public policy debates. It is time for us to conceptualize world history as not only 'what' we choose to study, but also 'how' we approach a topic in the first place. In this sense the development of global thinking skills are an important prerequisite to a successful study of any world history content.

         The field of world history has many developed bodies of specialized literature, which have been the subject of several excellent historiographical surveys in the last decade. Jerry Bentley's Shapes of World History in Twentieth-Century Scholarship, for example, provides a succinct account of the major scholarly works and trends that have influenced the field in the last century

         World historians practice a way of thinking defined by these two sets of characteristics: the inclination to ask big questions about how the world works as a whole and the interest in developing innovative techniques to answer such large-scale, complicated questions. Thus far, world history as a way of thinking has been primarily described as an intellectual characteristic shared by professional scholars engaged in the field. However, there is a much wider demand for the kinds of thinking skills that world historians practice. For example, world historians have developed ways of thinking about the kinds of big-picture questions currently being asked by the U.S. public, including why the attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred, and how effective the war on terrorism has been in decreasing the chances of a repeat disaster. There is public concern as well about whether the U.S. is a liberating force or an occupying power in Iraq, and whether or not Iraq is 'another Vietnam.' Americans are wondering about the causes of—and the solutions to—the economic problems facing our communities in a globalizing economy, and why people in some countries are rich and poor in others. They are asking about the relationships between producers and consumers, and about the nature of globalization and how it affects communities. World historians practice a way of thinking that provides the conceptual tools to address questions of such magnitude and complexity: few other fields can say the same.

         12 Of course, the world history literature does not hold a monopoly on good models for developing the ability to think about the connections between the local and the global. In fact, many of the key conceptual founders of the field came from disciplines outside of history. Yet world history is committed to exploring global connections systematically and in a self-reflective way, which in turn has become the hallmark of the field. Indeed, the most distinctive feature of the Northeastern world history program was the encouragement of world history as a way of thinking. Any program interested in building upon the Northeastern model should begin with this feature. 13

         In conclusion, the most important things the field of world history has to offer the researcher, teacher, student, and general public are the conceptual tools required for addressing complex global processes and problems. We should highlight our distinctive set of analytical thinking tools in our research, in our classrooms, and in our communities. Perhaps conceptualizing world history as a way of thinking makes this task a little less complicated.