Reviews for Pelican History of World

The average rating for Pelican History of World based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-04-09 00:00:00 LEE LITTLETON This is a masterpiece, highly recommended to anyone seriously interested in a good quality, thoughtful, insightful overview of human history. This book manages to provide a surprisingly good level of detail while keeping a wide breath of analysis and encompassing the whole of historical development since prehistory up to contemporary times. It should be kept as a reference, not just read (and probably it should be read at least twice, to fully enjoy it). It is a real pity that there are a few (mostly editorial) choices that I personally found quite questionable: first, the maps are so small as to be rendered virtually unreadable – and they are not always relevant nor helpful - an unforgivable error on the part of the publisher. Lack of timelines and suggested readings are also quite frustrating. I personally think that timelines would have been extremely valuable for a book of such breadth and ambition, and I am very disappointed by the fact that there are none provided. Apart from the issues mentioned above, it is nonetheless an amazingly engrossing and rewarding read, so I am giving it 5 stars.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-03-18 00:00:00 Paul Refakis If you've been following me for a while, you'll know that I read this book in increments over 13 months -- I could have read it in 12, but I took this February off because I was getting wearied by the tome. If you read 3 1/4 pp per day, you will finish this book in a year. If you don't--if you read it like a normal-sized book, I think the sheer mass of it will make you throw in the towel fairly soon. But 3 1/4 pp are manageable. It's hard not to give a magisterial volume like this 5 stars. I liked it because I like history. Here you have the whole sweep of human achievement, from the first stone tools and cave paintings to the Arab Spring. Our technological advancement and cultural changes are tracked in the broadest ways. The movement from small, isolated communities to broader nations and states to integrated polities and economies to the new globalised world is on display in this book. Along the way, you meet the individuals, the stories that are the other aspect of history that keep people like me coming to read and reread the grand saga of human achievement, sorrow, and struggle. Ashurbanipal. Ramesses II. Plato. Alexander. Confucius. Siddartha 'the Buddha'. Julius Caesar. Constantine. Mohammed. Charles 'the Hammer' Martel. Thomas Aquinas. Martin Luther. Winston Churchill. Mao Zedong. Mohondas 'Mahatma' Gandhi. Loads and loads of South and East Asian persons I'd never met before but whose acquaintance I was glad to make. I recommend this book, with its Egyptians and Saxons, its Indians and Mayans, its Romans and Chinese, its Mongols and Americans, its East Africans and Japanese. My problem -- and this is a separate, wider rant, so I'll keep it short -- is epitomised in the following fact: the entire ancient world, from Mesopotamia to the Middle Ages, including the Mediterranean, South Asian, and East Asian worlds, takes under 300 pages, and the final 300 pages cover life from the First World War onwards. I don't expect equal coverage of the ancient and modern, but this is an extreme case of the usual disparity. (Rant over.) There are a few other moments throughout that I either disagreed with or felt could have been spun a bit differently, but overall the book is worth the read.