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Days That Changed The World - The 50 Defining Events Of World History
Days that changed the worldCovering nearly 2500 years, from 28 September 480 BC to 11 September 2001. Days that changed the world tells the stories of 50 days that truly made history.Included amongst these momentous turning points are the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Crucifixion, The first Crusade, Colombus making landfall in the Americas, Cook's Endeavour departing Plymouth, the taking of Bastille, The Boxer rebellion, Einstein revealing his Theory of Relativity, the first day on the Somme, Little Boy devastating Hiroshima. The Appolo II Moon Landing, The Fall of the Berlin Wall and The release of Nelson Mandela.For each, Days that Changed The world explains the events of the day, their cause and consequences, providing both an insight into each era and understanding of the wider themes of the world history.
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First published January 1, 2006
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August 4, 2022
از نبرد سالامیس در نمی‌دونم چقدر قبل از میلاد شروع و به یازده سپتامبر ۲۰۰۱ ختم می‌شه.
پنجاه واقعه‌ی مهم تاریخی رو می‌گه، و توضیح کوتاهی می‌ده که چی باعث شد رخ بدن و بعد اثر و نتیجه‌شون چی بود.
باعث نشد من به خوندن و کسب اطلاعات بیشتر درباره‌ی هیچ واقعه‌ی تاریخی جدیدی علاقمند بشم و حقیقت اینکه بیشتر اطلاعاتش رو هم خودم به‌صورت خرده‌اطلاعات‌عمومی داشتم از قبل.
سورئال‌ترین بخش ادیوبوک این بود که نیمه‌شب یکی به انگلیسی از اصول و فروع دین اسلام و زندگی پیامبر اسلام در گوشم حرف می‌زد و سنت و فلان توضیح می‌داد واسه‌م. :))
پنجاه واقعه‌ی مهم تاریخی رو می‌گه، و توضیح کوتاهی می‌ده که چی باعث شد رخ بدن و بعد اثر و نتیجه‌شون چی بود.
باعث نشد من به خوندن و کسب اطلاعات بیشتر درباره‌ی هیچ واقعه‌ی تاریخی جدیدی علاقمند بشم و حقیقت اینکه بیشتر اطلاعاتش رو هم خودم به‌صورت خرده‌اطلاعات‌عمومی داشتم از قبل.
سورئال‌ترین بخش ادیوبوک این بود که نیمه‌شب یکی به انگلیسی از اصول و فروع دین اسلام و زندگی پیامبر اسلام در گوشم حرف می‌زد و سنت و فلان توضیح می‌داد واسه‌م. :))
November 20, 2018
Objective Summary
Williams lists the 50 days that he believes most impacted world history. He chose them because of their “undeniable significance and global impact.” He then elaborates on each date by providing the events leading up to the date, the date itself, and the consequences. Here’s the list with the date and event. It follows the British date convention of day, month, and year. This format always seemed logical to me because it moves from smallest to largest unit of time, as opposed to the American format of month, day, and year—though referring to event 50 below as “Nine Eleven” only makes sense using the latter.
1. 28-9-480 BC – Battle of Salamis
2. 15-3-44 BC – Assassination of Julius Caesar
3. Good Friday c.30 AD – Crucifixion of Jesus Christ
4. 11-5-330 – Dedication of Constantinople
5. 31-12-406 – A Confederacy of German Tribes Crosses the Rhine
6. 7-12-632 – Death of Muhammad
7. 11-10-732 – Battle of Tours
8. 25-12-800 – Coronation of Charlemagne
9. 27-11-1095 – Pope Urban II Preaches the First Crusade
10. 25-8-1227 – Death of Genghis Khan
11. 29-5-1453 – Fall of Constantinople
12. 12-10-1492 – Columbus Makes Landfall in the Bahamas
13. 20-9-1519 – Magellan Sets Sail for South America
14. 18-4-1521 – Luther Defies Charles V at the Diet of Worms
15. 29-7-1588 – Defeat of the Spanish Armada
16. 21-10-1600 – Tokugawa Ieyasu Wins the Battle of Sekigahara
17. 24-5-1607 – Foundation of Jamestown, Virginia
18. 23-5-1618 – Defenestration of Prague
19. 5-6-1661 – Isaac Newton Matriculates at Cambridge University
20. 12-9-1683 – Ottomans Abandon the Siege of Vienna
21. 11-4-1713 – Peace of Utrecht
22. 26-8-1768 – Endeavour Leaves Plymouth
23. 4-7-1776 – US Declaration of Independence
24. 14-7-1789 – Fall of the Bastille
25. 18-6-1815 – Battle of Waterloo
26. 17-12-1819 – Simon Bolivar Named President of Gran Colombia
27. 15-9-1830 – Opening of the Liverpool-Manchester Railway
28. 23-8-1833 – Parliament Passes the Emancipation Act
29. 8-7-1853 – Commodore Perry Anchors in Tokyo Bay
30. 9-4-1865 – Robert E. Lee Surrenders at Appomattox
31. 1-9-1870 – Battle of Sedan
32. 7-3-1876 – Alexander Graham Bell Develops the Telephone
33. 20-6-1900 – Boxer Rebellion
34. 30-6-1905 – E=mc^2: Special Theory of Relativity
35. 28-6-1914 – Assassination of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo
36. 1-7-1916 – First Day on the Somme
37. 7-11-1917 – Storming of the Winter Palace
38. 22-6-1941 – Operation Barbarossa
39. 7-12-1941 – Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor
40. 6-8-1945 – Bombing of Hiroshima
41. 25-3-1957 – Treaties of Rome
42. 28-10-1962 – Krushchev Agrees to Remove Missiles from Cuba
43. 28-8-1963 – ‘I Have Dream’
44. 21-7-1969 – ‘The Eagle Has Landed’
45. 29-3-1973 – Last US Troops Leave Vietnam
46. 16-10-1973 – OPEC Raises the Price of Oil
47. 3-2-1976 – Rise to Power of William Henry Gates III
48. 9-11-1989 – Breaching of the Berlin Wall
49. 11-2-1990 – Nelson Mandela is Released from Prison
50. 11-9-2001 – Nine Eleven
Subjective Thoughts
A summary of the most significant dates from history would be an efficient artifact. But the concept of this book outshines its execution. There are two main problems. First, it skews too heavily towards both European history and recent history. It does so at the expense of African, Asian, and ancient history. A full 58% of the events on Williams’s list occurred in the last 250 years. Only about 18% of the listed events occurred in Asia, Africa, or South America, and these events frequently involved European individuals or interests. The recency bias makes sense considering technological advancements like the atom bomb, landing on the moon, and the internet revolutionized human achievement and experience. But do the events numbered 36, 38, 45, 46, or 49 above really “define history” more so than, say, the development of Gutenberg’s printing press or the internet, or the construction of the Great Pyramids or the Great Wall of China? I tend to think not.
Second, history is fluid. Causes and consequences flow as an incomprehensible stream or an impossibly interconnected piece of twine. To pull out single days as representations for eras requires a lot of context. And here I think Williams falters. His prose leaves much to be desired. His weakness is a combination of trying to convey too much information in awkward sentence structure, and poor organizational lay out. Instead of presenting the events chronologically, he jumps back and forth from the events, to the causes, to the consequences in haphazard fashion. It can be hard to track. I could follow events he described if I already had familiarity with them. But Williams did not effectively elucidate unfamiliar events for me. I frequently found my mind wandering when he would vomit word salad like this upon me:
Count Heinrich von Thurm led the revolt of the Bohemian Protestants and the Protestant Union sent an army commanded by Count Ernst von Mansfield to support von Thurm’s rebels. Wenceslas William von Ruppa formed a provisional government which replaced the Hapsburg administration. The Evangelical Union of German Protestant princes, led by Frederick, the Elector Palatine, prepared to confront the Catholic League of German princes led by Maximilian, elector of Bavaria. The death in March 1619 of the conciliatory emperor Matthias aggravated the crisis since Ferdinand, now reigning as King Ferdinand II of Bohemia, was also elected Matthias’ successor as emperor. The Bohemian estates deposed Ferdinand and then elected as king the Elector Frederick V (the Count Palatine) who, in November, was crowned in Prague’s St. Vitus’ cathedral.
And so it went. No thanks.
Revealing Quotes
“Plato had said that the history of the world was the victory of persuasion over force.”
“[T]he Nicene Creed is Constantine’s most important theological legacy. The ruler, who used the title isapostolos to signify his equality with the Apostles at the end of his life, was a sincere, if bloody, Christian. When his son, the Caesar Crispus, became too popular he had him murdered. He elevated his mother to the rank of Augusta and when that made his wife jealous he showed his filial devotion by murdering the unfortunate Fausta. Constantine wanted to make Rome as Christian a city as Constantinople and built the basilica of St Peter on the Vatican Hill.”
“[Genghis Khan’s] followers were men like himself—warriors who lacked powerful connections because their clans had been defeated in battle. Genghis could therefore use them to develop a Mongol army run by officers chosen on the basis of their ability rather than their lineage. . . . The early campaigns established Genghis’ typical methods: massacres were regularly used; agents were sent ahead to demoralize and divide the garrison and inhabitants of an enemy city; populations could be slaughtered despite a prompt surrender.”
“[According to Martin Luther] humanity stood alone before God and needed no priests or saints to intervene on its behalf. . . . His writings were then publicly burned in Rome. . . . He had raised the most fundamental of all questions: what is the basis of authority and of the laws which enforce obedience? . . . [H]e would only recant if he became convinced of his own error either by reason or a by scripture. . . . Luther probably did not say ‘Here I stand, I can do no other.’ But the phrase became famous because it really did sum up his position. He is the hero therefore not only of the Protestant Reformation but of the voice of the stubborn individual conscience. . . . Indulgences summed up all of Luther’s deepest feelings against the edifice of a corrupt Catholic sacramentalism bent on manipulating God’s will. Once his questioning started, much else was rejected as well: Papal primacy, the infallibility of the councils of the Church, transubstantiation of the blood and wine into the body and blood of Christ, and clerical celibacy were all dumped unceremoniously.”
“When the last king is hanged with the bowels of the last priest, the human race can hope for happiness.” – popular 18th-century phrase and found in Parisian journals
“The American Congress abolished (1807) the trade in slaves but smuggling and high birthrates meant that the slave supply continued to rise. The slave population of the US increased from 1,119,354 in 1810 to 3,963,760 in 1860 and slave-breeding became an important economic activity in the old south . . . . Central and South America accounted for some seventy-five per cent of the total 11.5 million Africans who were transported as slaves, only 9.5 million of whom arrived alive. . . . English Quakers had first petitioned parliament to abolish slavery in 1783 and their Pennsylvanian brethren had voiced their first formal opposition in 1688. The judgement in 1772 of Chief Justice Mansfield that James Somerset, an escaped slave, could not be forcibly returned from Britain to Virginia, was a landmark decision ending slavery’s status in English law . . . . West Indian incomes, however vast, were now starting to offend that important political and social force—British respectability. . . . Most of the former Spanish colonies in Latin America continued with slavery until the 1850s. . . . [T]he native economy of Africans themselves, among their chieftains and in their towns, was geared to slavery. The British advance into Africa from 1815 onwards therefore combined humanitarian argument with colonial advantage. . . . [T]he British advance was especially marked by ethical energy and a self-confident Christian morality. This introduced a novel ambiguity into imperial policy, especially in the Middle East. The British navy patrolled the Indian ocean and the east African coastline where black Muslim chiefs co-operated with the Arab merchants and traders whose slave trade, centred on Zanzibar, extended across vast distances. African slaves were sent up the Persian gulf to Persia, Turkey and Mesopotamia. The trade in Christian Abyssinian slaves was particularly offensive to the British and naval officers often had to enter into local deals with rulers prepared to sell their slavery rights for cash.”
“The West had been able to outspend the Warsaw Pact since communist regimes were financially as well as morally bankrupt.”
Williams lists the 50 days that he believes most impacted world history. He chose them because of their “undeniable significance and global impact.” He then elaborates on each date by providing the events leading up to the date, the date itself, and the consequences. Here’s the list with the date and event. It follows the British date convention of day, month, and year. This format always seemed logical to me because it moves from smallest to largest unit of time, as opposed to the American format of month, day, and year—though referring to event 50 below as “Nine Eleven” only makes sense using the latter.
1. 28-9-480 BC – Battle of Salamis
2. 15-3-44 BC – Assassination of Julius Caesar
3. Good Friday c.30 AD – Crucifixion of Jesus Christ
4. 11-5-330 – Dedication of Constantinople
5. 31-12-406 – A Confederacy of German Tribes Crosses the Rhine
6. 7-12-632 – Death of Muhammad
7. 11-10-732 – Battle of Tours
8. 25-12-800 – Coronation of Charlemagne
9. 27-11-1095 – Pope Urban II Preaches the First Crusade
10. 25-8-1227 – Death of Genghis Khan
11. 29-5-1453 – Fall of Constantinople
12. 12-10-1492 – Columbus Makes Landfall in the Bahamas
13. 20-9-1519 – Magellan Sets Sail for South America
14. 18-4-1521 – Luther Defies Charles V at the Diet of Worms
15. 29-7-1588 – Defeat of the Spanish Armada
16. 21-10-1600 – Tokugawa Ieyasu Wins the Battle of Sekigahara
17. 24-5-1607 – Foundation of Jamestown, Virginia
18. 23-5-1618 – Defenestration of Prague
19. 5-6-1661 – Isaac Newton Matriculates at Cambridge University
20. 12-9-1683 – Ottomans Abandon the Siege of Vienna
21. 11-4-1713 – Peace of Utrecht
22. 26-8-1768 – Endeavour Leaves Plymouth
23. 4-7-1776 – US Declaration of Independence
24. 14-7-1789 – Fall of the Bastille
25. 18-6-1815 – Battle of Waterloo
26. 17-12-1819 – Simon Bolivar Named President of Gran Colombia
27. 15-9-1830 – Opening of the Liverpool-Manchester Railway
28. 23-8-1833 – Parliament Passes the Emancipation Act
29. 8-7-1853 – Commodore Perry Anchors in Tokyo Bay
30. 9-4-1865 – Robert E. Lee Surrenders at Appomattox
31. 1-9-1870 – Battle of Sedan
32. 7-3-1876 – Alexander Graham Bell Develops the Telephone
33. 20-6-1900 – Boxer Rebellion
34. 30-6-1905 – E=mc^2: Special Theory of Relativity
35. 28-6-1914 – Assassination of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo
36. 1-7-1916 – First Day on the Somme
37. 7-11-1917 – Storming of the Winter Palace
38. 22-6-1941 – Operation Barbarossa
39. 7-12-1941 – Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor
40. 6-8-1945 – Bombing of Hiroshima
41. 25-3-1957 – Treaties of Rome
42. 28-10-1962 – Krushchev Agrees to Remove Missiles from Cuba
43. 28-8-1963 – ‘I Have Dream’
44. 21-7-1969 – ‘The Eagle Has Landed’
45. 29-3-1973 – Last US Troops Leave Vietnam
46. 16-10-1973 – OPEC Raises the Price of Oil
47. 3-2-1976 – Rise to Power of William Henry Gates III
48. 9-11-1989 – Breaching of the Berlin Wall
49. 11-2-1990 – Nelson Mandela is Released from Prison
50. 11-9-2001 – Nine Eleven
Subjective Thoughts
A summary of the most significant dates from history would be an efficient artifact. But the concept of this book outshines its execution. There are two main problems. First, it skews too heavily towards both European history and recent history. It does so at the expense of African, Asian, and ancient history. A full 58% of the events on Williams’s list occurred in the last 250 years. Only about 18% of the listed events occurred in Asia, Africa, or South America, and these events frequently involved European individuals or interests. The recency bias makes sense considering technological advancements like the atom bomb, landing on the moon, and the internet revolutionized human achievement and experience. But do the events numbered 36, 38, 45, 46, or 49 above really “define history” more so than, say, the development of Gutenberg’s printing press or the internet, or the construction of the Great Pyramids or the Great Wall of China? I tend to think not.
Second, history is fluid. Causes and consequences flow as an incomprehensible stream or an impossibly interconnected piece of twine. To pull out single days as representations for eras requires a lot of context. And here I think Williams falters. His prose leaves much to be desired. His weakness is a combination of trying to convey too much information in awkward sentence structure, and poor organizational lay out. Instead of presenting the events chronologically, he jumps back and forth from the events, to the causes, to the consequences in haphazard fashion. It can be hard to track. I could follow events he described if I already had familiarity with them. But Williams did not effectively elucidate unfamiliar events for me. I frequently found my mind wandering when he would vomit word salad like this upon me:
Count Heinrich von Thurm led the revolt of the Bohemian Protestants and the Protestant Union sent an army commanded by Count Ernst von Mansfield to support von Thurm’s rebels. Wenceslas William von Ruppa formed a provisional government which replaced the Hapsburg administration. The Evangelical Union of German Protestant princes, led by Frederick, the Elector Palatine, prepared to confront the Catholic League of German princes led by Maximilian, elector of Bavaria. The death in March 1619 of the conciliatory emperor Matthias aggravated the crisis since Ferdinand, now reigning as King Ferdinand II of Bohemia, was also elected Matthias’ successor as emperor. The Bohemian estates deposed Ferdinand and then elected as king the Elector Frederick V (the Count Palatine) who, in November, was crowned in Prague’s St. Vitus’ cathedral.
And so it went. No thanks.
Revealing Quotes
“Plato had said that the history of the world was the victory of persuasion over force.”
“[T]he Nicene Creed is Constantine’s most important theological legacy. The ruler, who used the title isapostolos to signify his equality with the Apostles at the end of his life, was a sincere, if bloody, Christian. When his son, the Caesar Crispus, became too popular he had him murdered. He elevated his mother to the rank of Augusta and when that made his wife jealous he showed his filial devotion by murdering the unfortunate Fausta. Constantine wanted to make Rome as Christian a city as Constantinople and built the basilica of St Peter on the Vatican Hill.”
“[Genghis Khan’s] followers were men like himself—warriors who lacked powerful connections because their clans had been defeated in battle. Genghis could therefore use them to develop a Mongol army run by officers chosen on the basis of their ability rather than their lineage. . . . The early campaigns established Genghis’ typical methods: massacres were regularly used; agents were sent ahead to demoralize and divide the garrison and inhabitants of an enemy city; populations could be slaughtered despite a prompt surrender.”
“[According to Martin Luther] humanity stood alone before God and needed no priests or saints to intervene on its behalf. . . . His writings were then publicly burned in Rome. . . . He had raised the most fundamental of all questions: what is the basis of authority and of the laws which enforce obedience? . . . [H]e would only recant if he became convinced of his own error either by reason or a by scripture. . . . Luther probably did not say ‘Here I stand, I can do no other.’ But the phrase became famous because it really did sum up his position. He is the hero therefore not only of the Protestant Reformation but of the voice of the stubborn individual conscience. . . . Indulgences summed up all of Luther’s deepest feelings against the edifice of a corrupt Catholic sacramentalism bent on manipulating God’s will. Once his questioning started, much else was rejected as well: Papal primacy, the infallibility of the councils of the Church, transubstantiation of the blood and wine into the body and blood of Christ, and clerical celibacy were all dumped unceremoniously.”
“When the last king is hanged with the bowels of the last priest, the human race can hope for happiness.” – popular 18th-century phrase and found in Parisian journals
“The American Congress abolished (1807) the trade in slaves but smuggling and high birthrates meant that the slave supply continued to rise. The slave population of the US increased from 1,119,354 in 1810 to 3,963,760 in 1860 and slave-breeding became an important economic activity in the old south . . . . Central and South America accounted for some seventy-five per cent of the total 11.5 million Africans who were transported as slaves, only 9.5 million of whom arrived alive. . . . English Quakers had first petitioned parliament to abolish slavery in 1783 and their Pennsylvanian brethren had voiced their first formal opposition in 1688. The judgement in 1772 of Chief Justice Mansfield that James Somerset, an escaped slave, could not be forcibly returned from Britain to Virginia, was a landmark decision ending slavery’s status in English law . . . . West Indian incomes, however vast, were now starting to offend that important political and social force—British respectability. . . . Most of the former Spanish colonies in Latin America continued with slavery until the 1850s. . . . [T]he native economy of Africans themselves, among their chieftains and in their towns, was geared to slavery. The British advance into Africa from 1815 onwards therefore combined humanitarian argument with colonial advantage. . . . [T]he British advance was especially marked by ethical energy and a self-confident Christian morality. This introduced a novel ambiguity into imperial policy, especially in the Middle East. The British navy patrolled the Indian ocean and the east African coastline where black Muslim chiefs co-operated with the Arab merchants and traders whose slave trade, centred on Zanzibar, extended across vast distances. African slaves were sent up the Persian gulf to Persia, Turkey and Mesopotamia. The trade in Christian Abyssinian slaves was particularly offensive to the British and naval officers often had to enter into local deals with rulers prepared to sell their slavery rights for cash.”
“The West had been able to outspend the Warsaw Pact since communist regimes were financially as well as morally bankrupt.”
July 14, 2008
This was my "Coffee Break" book when I had 5 minutes free here and there. It's broken down into a series of short essays of the "50 Defining Events of World History." You probably don't reach the level of detail necessary for most of the events, but it is a nice refresher especially for those events you are unfamiliar with. For more common-education events, the author really does do a very good job analyzing long term effects. Each event had at least one perspective I'd never thought of.
August 22, 2023
This has been on my shelf for a long time, and before moving it out, I decided to actually read it. The premise is promising, if a bit presumptuous. 50 events that define human history? Does the crucifixion of Jesus Christ really equate in impact with OPEC raising the price of oil? I don’t think so.
I did learn a lot. The authors brief review was meant to boil events down to the basics, and often to the profound. For instance, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by a 19 year old student in 1914 resulted in the death of 1.8 million Germans, 1.7 million Russians, 1.4 million French,1.2 million Austrians and Hungarians, 900,000 British, 400,000 Italians, 325,000 Turks and 115,000 US citizens. Another 20 million wounded. And to what end? Nothing was won, nothing was resolved.
I did learn a lot. The authors brief review was meant to boil events down to the basics, and often to the profound. For instance, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by a 19 year old student in 1914 resulted in the death of 1.8 million Germans, 1.7 million Russians, 1.4 million French,1.2 million Austrians and Hungarians, 900,000 British, 400,000 Italians, 325,000 Turks and 115,000 US citizens. Another 20 million wounded. And to what end? Nothing was won, nothing was resolved.
June 13, 2017
A dull hyperbolic, over-simplified, Euro-centric take on history. While some chapters are pretty interesting, most are examples that do not meet the books title. The non-European (or neo-European) examples feel like token gestures that again do not meet the book's scope. Finally, only two dates are from before 1 CE; nothing world changing happened prior to the Greek defeat of the Persian Empire's advance or Julius Caesar's assassination?
August 6, 2019
Interesting reading for those passionate about history. It is very Euro or Western-centric. Yet, one should not forget that from the 15th century onward the western powers influenced much of the world's history. The covered 50 events have indeed impacted and changed the course of the world's narrative. It is also curious to see that as from the 2nd World War one would have thought that the world leaders would have learned some lessons. Alas!
October 23, 2021
The subtitle might well have been '... Defining Events of European History', but I kind of expected that. The period ranges from the Battle of Salamis to 9/11, so you inevitably can't help thinking 'What about XXXX, how can you leave that out?' Having said which, within the limitations of having 4-5 pages per event, the background and aftermath are set out intelligently, and I found quite a lot I really should have known about but didn't.
July 7, 2019
Compact and interesting package of world history, but the narrative was sometimes a bit confusing.
Read
June 29, 2020Interesting but I only read a few of the stories
August 2, 2025
3/10 Most of these events didn't really change the world. It's just war and more war and more war. almost to the end, there are 2 or 3 things that actually change the world, like the invention of the telephone. the stories about the wars were also more about when and where they happened, which doesn't matter. what matters about wars is why they happened and did the problem get solved.
August 17, 2015
I would recommend this book to people who don't want to commit to reading a whole book front to back. This book is broken into 50 stories consisting of nothing but the facts of what happened at these events. I enjoyed it thoroughly since the writing style is short and to the point. The author provides detail on the background information and reasoning for the events without going unnecessarily deep. I recommend this for anyone who likes to read historical books without wanting to read an entire book on one subject.
December 12, 2011
The writing is pretty dry and no real rationale is given as to why the given events were chosen over other, similarly influential, events. It also seemed like a three page essay was far too short to do justice for almost any of these historical events.
June 30, 2012
A fantastic book which shows 50 different events which have shaped history. The author describes the event and then provides the background to what lead up to the event and the impact the event had on shaping the world as we know it today.
July 31, 2007
Good Book, for enrich our knowledge!
June 16, 2011
audio book
Read
July 27, 2011interesting chronology
August 15, 2012
Interesting read. However, it would have been even more interesting if it had been a little less analytic and a bit more descriptive.
October 18, 2012
Quite difficult to read if you don't have a strong history background.
March 8, 2013
Full of West European and American History. Boring read.
May 7, 2013
Very interesting subject matter.
Not an easy, free-flowing read unfortunately.
Not an easy, free-flowing read unfortunately.
January 18, 2016
Excellent read. Just enough (about seven pages each)to give one an appreciation of how important the event was, without being bogged-down with detail. Very helpful comments on these great events.
January 6, 2015
Great little breakdown of so many important events in world history. Would read again (just gets you thinking) and makes me want to read more.
July 21, 2012
Compact and interesting package of world history, but the narrative was sometimes a bit confusing.
August 15, 2013
I really enjoyed reading this book. It gives a personal account of History.
April 6, 2017
The history nerd in me loved this book!
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews