World History
50 Events You Really Need to Know
Published on 28. April 2011
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-0-85738-075-3 (ISBN)
Description
People often complain that in history lessons at school they were taught just a few topics - the Romans, the Tudors, the Nazis - and how they have no idea at all about what happened in between. To remedy this, World History: 50 Key Milestones You Really Need to Know offers brief and stimulating outlines of key developments in the history of the world, from the beginning of agriculture 10,000 years ago to the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11.
Ian Crofton, the author of several books of popular history including The Kings and Queens of England, Traitors and Turncoats and History Without the Boring Bits, brings his lively style to bear in a series of essays ranging from ancient Egypt to modern China, from the Vikings and the Mongols to the French Revolution and the Cold War.
Each essay is accompanied by a detailed time line of dates and events, and the flavour of the period concerned is brought to life by selected contemporary quotations from figures as diverse as Aristotle, Ashoka, Saladin, Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther, Suleiman the Magnificent, Galileo, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, Mary Wollstonecraft, Napoleon, Lincoln, Lenin and Winston Churchill. In addition, box features throw light on a range of related topics, from the Nazca Lines to Renaissance man, from Confucianism and the state to Alexander the Great's horse, from Islamic science and the Barbary corsairs to the Enigma code and the atomic bomb.
Ian Crofton, the author of several books of popular history including The Kings and Queens of England, Traitors and Turncoats and History Without the Boring Bits, brings his lively style to bear in a series of essays ranging from ancient Egypt to modern China, from the Vikings and the Mongols to the French Revolution and the Cold War.
Each essay is accompanied by a detailed time line of dates and events, and the flavour of the period concerned is brought to life by selected contemporary quotations from figures as diverse as Aristotle, Ashoka, Saladin, Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther, Suleiman the Magnificent, Galileo, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, Mary Wollstonecraft, Napoleon, Lincoln, Lenin and Winston Churchill. In addition, box features throw light on a range of related topics, from the Nazca Lines to Renaissance man, from Confucianism and the state to Alexander the Great's horse, from Islamic science and the Barbary corsairs to the Enigma code and the atomic bomb.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Trade binding
Dimensions
Height: 209 mm
Width: 179 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
535 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-85738-075-3 (9780857380753)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
04/2011
Quercus Publishing
€3.99
Available for download
Person
Ian Crofton, formerly editor-in-chief of The Guinness Encyclopedia, has written a number of works of popular narrative history, from Great Escapes and A Curious History of Food and Drink to The Little Book of Big History and World History: 50 Events You Really Need to Know. The last two bestsellers have been translated into many languages. Crofton has also explored the interplay of landscape, history and nature in more personal books such as Walking the Border: A Journey between Scotland and England ('Excellent', The Guardian), Fringed with Mud and Pearls: An English Island Odyssey (selected by The Telegraph as one of their top twenty travel books of 2021) and, most recently, Upland: A Journey through Time and the Hills ('A beautifully written celebration of a lifelong passion', Stephen Venables, author and mountaineer).
Content
Introduction. FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE MIDDLE AGES: The beginnings of agriculture; The first cities; Egypt of the pharaohs; Classical Greece; Alexander the Great; The spread of Roman power; The fall of Rome and its aftermath; The rise of Islam; The Vikings; The Crusades; The Black Death. OTHER WORLDS: Precolonial India; Imperial China; The Mongols; Japan, the island empire; Incas and Aztecs; Empires and kingdoms of Africa. THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD: The Renaissance; The Ottoman empire; The voyages of discovery; The Reformation; The Counter-Reformation; The English Revolution; The Scientific Revolution; The age of empire; The Enlightenment. GATHERING PACE: The American Revolution; The French Revolution; The Napoleonic Era; The Industrial Revolution; Nationalism in Europe; Slavery; The expansion of the USA; The American Civil War; The rise of socialism; Women's rights. THE 20th CENTURY AND AFTER: The First World War; Lenin and Stalin; The shadow of Fascism; The Great Depression; The Second World War - Europe; The Second World War - Asia and the Pacific; The Holocaust; The Cold War; The end of empire; The Vietnam War; The Arab-Israeli conflict; The fall of communism; The resurgence of China; 9/11 and after. Index.