As the author of a textbook among many distinguished research monographs here, I have a feeling of representing a pygmy among giants. As you all probably know, among scholars in our research university textbook writing is assigned to the category of teaching. I'm going to devote my brief comments here to speak in defense of the lowly textbook, both as an intellectual challenge and as a creation, such as it is, of that lofty research calling of which we're justifiably proud.

Though other authors of monographs may — and many probably do — view their books, once published, as the definitive word, my own experience has led me to expect to uncover — on my own, regardless of the reviewers' acerbic comments — a whole shopping list of shortcomings crying out for correction. But these monographic babies, once born, are ours to live with.

Now the textbook is a different affair. Each time my publisher has come to me requesting a new edition, my immediate reaction has been, "I'll get it right this time." I'll avoid leaving a public record here of my perceived personal inadequacies (call this self-censorship in defense of classroom prestige), and instead point to my foolhardy undertaking of seeking some sort of logical coherence and narrative unity in the 20th century's (and now early 21st century's) ongoing world historical saga, all that in the space of 400 pages.

The text started out as a story of "wars and revolutions" (its thematic subtitle); its present (6th) edition now offers a grand historical drama "from empires to nations." Getting it right over and over again has proven an ever-renewed intellectual challenge, perhaps not on a level with the creativity demanded of our research projects, but certainly enthralling for me and, I might hope, intelligible for my students.

That said, I cannot conceive of having undertaken and continued this textbookish quest "to get it right this time" had I not been at the same time a research historian. I will now, metaphorically speaking, mount my bully pulpit and adopt a pose of righteous indignation to refute the mean-spirited critics who claim that research is incompatible with our teaching obligations.

These two activities, for me, are part and parcel of the same scholarly endeavor. In personal terms, my research gave me the inspiration to take on textbook writing in modern world history.

The revolutionary theme that so preoccupied me in early editions emerged directly from my close encounter with the Russian revolution; the current "empires to nations" narrative first appeared in my inquiry into the history of Turkestan under the tsarist empire and then came alive in that extraordinary moment, of which I was witness while on research trips, of the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union (whose gravestone reads "the last empire").

I make no claim to universal or definitive truth in my story of the world in the 20th century, nor do I feel any need to apologize for not doing so. My textbook commitment adheres strictly, for better or worse, to the motto "History is what historians do."

Brower recently published the textbook, The World in the Twentieth Century: From Empires to Nations (2005, Prentice Hall). His scholarly interests are in modern Russian history and modern world history.