A History of the World

This is a seminal book about the History of the World we live in and I believe copies of it should be in every classroom in every school. If reading is not your thing, try it on Audible

I bought this book for my 9th and 10th grade history class. My students seemed to enjoy Marr's writing style. He has a talent for writing historical narrative without overloading the reader with facts and statistics. In terms of his approach to writing history, Marr explicitly states that he "concentrated on the biggest change-makers" and their social impact on the world. I was disappointed to see that of his select number of great change-makers covered, he did not mention Nelson Mandela--which explains my 4 out of 5 star rating. Marr's most interesting sub-chapters is "The Mystery or Imperialism" and "Leopold the Nasty," in which he discusses why modern imperialism starts in Europe and how the "Scramble for Africa" resulted from centuries of internal European rivalries. Marr does a great job elucidating the moral dilemmas of missionaries and delusions of capitalists involved in the destruction of Africa and the Congo, more specifically. His last sub-chapter "A Fair Field Full of Folk" was not as interesting, in which he attempts to cover global problems like overpopulation and climate change in the last seven pages of the book. I felt like he was tacking on everything he could think of that was left out of the book. To be fair, Marr's does make an effort to point out the risks of overpopulation and climate change throughout the text. Otherwise, he does some justice to covering racial and gender issues in history and is brutally honest about how such topics have been marginalized in history books, mainly by old white men. Overall, as a reader, I liked the book and his straight-to-the-point writing style. As a teacher, I would recommend assigning certain sections of the text to students to begin class discussion since the book is an easy read and his wit is sure to keep students' attention.

Obviousy covering all of history in one book leaves out many details and I'm sure more educated people are able to point those out. For me as a regular person who likes history there was plenty in this book for me to learn. Very enjoyable.

This may be the best world history book that I have read although I have not always enjoyed everything that Mr. Marr has produced. It explains a lot to me that have just been murky questions in my mind. Yes, I know that some of this information may not be the total fact of the matter(is any history book?) but it is his studied conception and certainly better than many. I enjoyed the fact that it was not just battle after battle and war after war. I have looked for history information that gives us knowledge of the many developments that have happened...not just war. Sure, no book is going to do that 100%. but at least this book tried to balance that in to its content. Remembering my school days, I now wish that a book like this had been available....because what was available was boring and just a small percentage of the real history. Mr. Marr does give opinions on peoples personalities and abilities...but if you don't agree with him, you may look up further information to form your own opinion.If anyone can come up with another book, another world history that is as interesting and as balanced as this book....I would like to see your suggestions....Keep in mind that I don't want to go through every detail. A book of this size cannot have every detail.

This is my first non-academic world history read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Marr weaves together different countries, cultures and their leaders smoothly page after page, often with a unifying theme in mind. Sometimes one can catch a bit of fluffy rhetoric but this does not detract from the experience even if the reader is only trying to gain new knowledge. The book is easy to read yet filled with detail. Marr definitely leans towards writing about new cultures and peoples or towards existing history with new historical information. I felt the book to be a bit short even though it's over 500 pages; there was certainly a huge skipping of historical events but Marr himself addresses this in the beginning of the book as inevitable of anyone trying to tackle a subject so daunting as world history. But Marr (or his editor) got it right when he named the book simply "A" history of the world (not "The") because it is merely one of many world history books that should be read for anyone serious enough about understanding the subject.

I was trying to find a medium-length world history book that really covered the world's history. This isn't easy, as most tend to focus primarily on European history. This book had relatively few reviews on Amazon, so I decided to keep looking rather than buy this when I first saw it. I ended up looking on the UK Amazon website, thinking that I may find a book there that wasn't available in the US. On the UK website, this book had many reviews, and they were very high. Based on this, I downloaded to my Kindle from the US website. The book is engaging. It doesn't cover any period as much as I'd like it to, but this is expected of a medium-length book that covers 10,000 years of history. It does however provide enough history for each period to help the reader determine what s/he would like to read about in greater detail, and then buy the relevant book for that period.

I got a quick response from supplier when i had some question of delivery. Though it is a second-hand book, it looks in a perfect condition. This is a good shopping experience. Five stars to goods and supplier. Thank you!

I live in Canada but visit the UK several times each year and watch his Sunday program on BBC 1. Mr Marr is eloquent on TV and in print. He has taken interesting 'takes' on history. A fun read.

This is one of the best history books I have every read because it is so original. You read things in this book which you just don't find anywhere else. The book isn't a laborious journey from prehistory to today, but a series of snapshots of significant people and events. The descriptions and analyses relating to both ancient times and modern are always insightful, containing new facts, often with much welcome humour. I cannot recommend this wonderful book too highly for the general reader, though history specialists will often find something new.

English is my secondary language. I find the writing structure of the author a bit too sophisticated for me. Hard to read.

Concise and enjoyable to read. Great read.