Part of the Connections: Key Themes in World History series, The Globe Encompassed combines the most recent secondary work in the field with the author's own personal archival work to present a updated synthesis of the topic.

The Globe Encompassed lays out in clear narrative form a series of connected stories that simultaneously instruct and fascinate the reader. Beyond that, the author-guide provides carefully chosen excerpts from primary sources that enable the reader to enter the mindsets of such notable personalities (and driving forces in Europe’s profound impact on the early modern world) as Vasco da Gama, Hernan Cortés, and Samuel de Champlain, and to see first-hand such widely separated and profoundly different colonial enterprises as Dutch-held Batavia (Jakarta) and Puritan New England. In so doing, Ames allows the reader to encompass the globe as it existed between 1500 and 1700.