. R. McNeill studied at Swarthmore College and Duke University and has taught at Georgetown University since 1985. He has held two Fulbright awards, Guggenheim, MacArthur Foundation and Woodrow Wilson Center Fellowships, and a visiting appointment at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. His books include The Atlantic Empires of France and Spain, 1700-1765 (1985); The Mountains of the Mediterranean World (1992); Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (2000), co-winner of the World History Association book prize, the Forest History Society book prize, and runner-up for the BP Natural World book prize, listed by the London Times among the ten best science books ever written (despite not being a science book) and translated into nine languages; The Human Web: A Bird's-eye View of World History (2003), co-authored with his father, William McNeill, and translated into seven languages; and most recently, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 (2010), which won the Beveridge Prize from the American Historical Association and was listed by the Wall Street Journal among the best books in early American history. In 2010 he was awarded the Toynbee Prize for 'academic and public contributions to humanity'.

Kenneth Pomeranz is University Professor in History and the College, University of Chicago. His work focuses mostly on China, though he is also very interested in comparative and world history. His publications include The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (2000), which won the John K. Fairbank Prize from the AHA, and shared the World History Association book prize and has been translated into seven languages; The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society and Economy in Inland North China, 1853-1937 (1993), which also won the Fairbank Prize; The World that Trade Created (with Steven Topik, first edition 1999, 3rd edition 2012), and a collection of essays recently published in France. He has also edited or co-edited five books, and was one of the founding editors of the Journal of Global History. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute for Advanced Studies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and other sources. In 2012 he was elected president of the American Historical Association.

Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of the Cambridge World History series, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The first book examines structures, spaces, and processes within which and through which the modern world was created, including the environment, energy, technology, population, disease, law, industrialization, imperialism, decolonization, nationalism, and socialism, along with key world regions.