Japan:beyond End of History Book

As someone who missed out on a lot of history in my early teens (it's a long story that involves moving house and multiple transfers between schools, etc. etc.), this book is a really neat round up of the last 500 years of world history. It's like the CliffsNotes edition of what most schools teach, though it takes a bit more than a weekend to properly get through.

There are some events which I wish it would have focused a bit more on, but as a basic crash course of the last 500 years, it's great.