A Little History of the World: Illustrated Edition
Ratings10
Average rating4.2
15
Ratings10
Average rating4.2
In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, the 26-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited by a publishing acquaintance to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser was published in Vienna to immediate success, and is now available in seventeen languages across the world.
Toward the end of his long life, Gombrich embarked upon a revision and, at last, an English translation. A Little History of the World presents his lively and involving history to English-language readers for the first time. Superbly designed and freshly illustrated, this is a book to be savored and collected.
In forty concise chapters, Gombrich tells the story of man from the stone age to the atomic bomb. In between emerges a colorful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, and the spread and limitations of science. This is a text dominated not by dates and facts, but by the sweep of mankind’s experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity’s achievements and an acute witness to its frailties.
The product of a generous and humane sensibility, this timeless account makes intelligible the full span of human history.
Series
1 released bookLittle History is a 7-book series first released in 1936 with contributions by E.H. Gombrich, Clifford Harper, and 6 others.
Reviews with the most likes.
Obviously this book is very dated but I like the way it puts world history in roughly sequential context. Believe it or not, I hadn't read a world history survey like this since high school and this was more comprehensive than that. (yikes!)
There seem to be some huge gaps in the way history is taught in the US (or at least the 90s education I received.). For example, I don't recall ever learning more about World War I than Ferdinand's death was the catalyst. Not the parties involved, resolution, even Wilson's intervention. All learnt after the fact.
I remember randomly spending a month on the French Revolution in a literature class. I could go on and on about the imbalance, but this little book is a nice survey of major world events up to the outbreak of WWII. It is, however, extremely euro-centric.
