A History of the World

By: Andrew Marr

Narrated by: Andrew Marr, David Timson

Fresh, exciting and vividly readable, this is popular history at its very best.

Our understanding of world history is changing, as new discoveries are made on all the continents and old prejudices are being challenged. In this truly global journey, political journalist Andrew Marr revisits some of the traditional epic stories, from classical Greece and Rome to the rise of Napoleon, but surrounds them with less familiar material, from Peru to the Ukraine, China to the Caribbean. He looks at cultures that have failed and vanished, as well as the origins of today’s superpowers, and finds surprising echoes and parallels across vast distances and epochs.

A History of the World is a book about the great change-makers of history and their times, people such as Cleopatra, Genghis Khan, Galileo and Mao, but it is also a book about us. For ‘the better we understand how rulers lose touch with reality, or why revolutions produce dictators more often than they produce happiness, or why some parts of the world are richer than others, the easier it is to understand our own times.’

AMAZING OVERVIEW

If you are interested in history don’t miss listening to this book. I have been a student of history since my mid-teens (I now am 83yrs. young). This book is an amazing compilation of history. For those who are not familiar with world history, but are interested,it is a good place to start. Good references to different books. As for me, as always, I learned something new and am sorry that I finished the book. My thanks to the author and narrator Mr. Andrew Marr and my thanks to Audible for making this book available, JK

Excellent Overview for a wide audience

Andrew Marra condensed version of his documentary series is concise, well balanced and centrist in its presentation. He is very clear in the introduction about the approach taken so that readers looking for an extremely feminist, Marxist or third world perspective on history will not be disappointed. That being said, Marr does indeed try to be more inclusive in his overview of history than many past authors have been. This is a useful resource for honors high school courses, as part of university curriculum or for the average intelligent person out there who wants to understand the flow of history and the consequences of key developments , changes, personalities and events.

Comprehensive but not easy to consume via audio book

This book was great and filling the many gaps in my understanding of world history. I can thoroughly recommend it. However, the narrative was long and hard to stay focused. There are many instances where the author keeps referring back to concepts as it by which time the listener has lost track of what he is referring to. Even many rewinds and relistens later, I still could not figure out what concepts he was referring to with such liberal use of impersonal pronouns.

Amazing, enlightening and entertaining

Listening to this book was a real pleasure. The author brings a combination of factfullness with "down to earth" realism which is difficult to see in a history book (which can be quite academic sometimes).

The audiobook is also very well performed. I definitely recommend it!

Sweeping History

Really enjoy this book! It is a sweeping human history that can be returned to again and again. As with any historical account there are elements of the author's interpretive preference that inevitably creep in and colour the narrative. However most of the time Marr's perspective is illuminating and informative and he does a great job tracing the influence of seemingly unconnected events.