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A Short History of the World

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A Short History of the World

By: Christopher Lascelles
Narrated by: Guy Bethell
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About this listen

There is an increasing realization that our knowledge of world history - and how it all fits together - is far from perfect. Here, Christopher Lascelles aims to fill the big gaps in our historical knowledge with a book that is easy to follow and assumes little prior knowledge of past events. He doesn't aim to come up with groundbreaking new theories on why things occurred but rather gives a broad overview of the generally accepted version of events so that nonhistorians will feel less ignorant when discussing the past.

While this book explores world history from the big bang to the present day, it principally covers key people, events, and empires since the dawn of the first civilizations in and around 3500 BC. Epic in scope but refreshingly concise, A Short History of the World is an excellent place to start to bring your historical knowledge up to scratch.

©2011 Christopher Lascelles (P)2016 Tantor
World Imperialism War Military France Ancient History Crusade Interwar Period World History

Critic Reviews

"A clearly written, remarkably comprehensive guide to the greatest story on Earth - man's journey from the earliest times to the modern day. Highly recommended." (Dan Jones, author of The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England)
"All of history in a little over seven hours? Christopher Lascelles's gem of compression, elegantly read by Guy Bethell in what sounds like the voice of Father Time himself, is like a fresh coat of paint in a badly lit room." ( AudioFile)

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Easy to listen to summary

It does what it says on the tin, a summary of world history. Easy to listen to and well narrated.

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Loved it

Fantastic source to learn about how history of different countries are related. If you want to have a big picture of the historical events and how they fit together, read this book.

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Great recap of world history

It doesn’t intend to be the most detailed account of world history but I found it really useful as a recap for more in-depth but much longer books like Andrew mars world history. This book is great to listen to afterwards to pull it all together in a more concise way.

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