Description
Book SynopsisFresh, exciting and vividly readable, this is popular history at its very best.
Our understanding of world history is changing, as new discoveries are made on all the continents and old prejudices are being challenged. In this truly global journey, political journalist Andrew Marr revisits some of the traditional epic stories, from classical Greece and Rome to the rise of Napoleon, but surrounds them with less familiar material, from Peru to the Ukraine, China to the Caribbean. He looks at cultures that have failed and vanished, as well as the origins of today’s superpowers, and finds surprising echoes and parallels across vast distances and epochs.
A History of the World is a book about the great change-makers of history and their times, people such as Cleopatra, Genghis Khan, Galileo and Mao, but it is also a book about us. For ‘the better we understand how rulers lose touch with reality, or why revolutions produce dictators more often than
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements - i: Acknowledgements Introduction - ii: Introduction Chapter - 1: Out of the Heat, Towards the Ice Chapter - 2: The Case for War Chapter - 3: The Sword and the Word Chapter - 4: Beyond the Muddy Melting Pot Chapter - 5: The World Blows Open Chapter - 6: Dreams of Freedom Chapter - 7: Capitalism and its Enemies Chapter - 8: 1918-2012: Our Times Section - iii: Notes Section - iv: Bibliography Index - v: Index Acknowledgements - vi: Picture Acknowledgements
