A History of the World

By: Andrew Marr

Narrated by: Andrew Marr, David Timson

Length: 26 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

From the earliest civilizations to the 21st century: a global journey through human history, published alongside a landmark BBC One television series.

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, 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. This 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.'

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

©2012 Andrew Marr (P)2012 Macmillan Digital Audio

Excellent comprehensive review.

I love thé way the author wove in all aspects around the world including geography, religion, culture, and more.

Thoroughly enjoyable (but at times light on dates)

Where does A History of the World rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is a very well polished audio book - really like the narrator.

What about Andrew Marr and David Timson ’s performance did you like?

The breadth of the book is massive, spanning all of human history. It is thoroughly researched and enjoyable.

Any additional comments?

My only negative comment is that it is at times light on hard dates, which makes putting the different threads of the storyline together a little difficult at times.

Inedible book

Very long and thorough. Highly worth it if you’re into this big picture style of work.

Enchanting

Highly recommended for anyone and everyone. Brilliantly woven, articulate celebration of the story of human existence.

Excellent and fascinating account of Human history

This book really helped me place different periods of history into perspective for me. I knew a lot about Roman, Greek and Egyptian history (I do wish more attention would have been paid to the latter), but my time frame was completely off in regards to ancient Chinese and Southern American cultures.

The narration is sublime. A fantastic buy in my opinion.

Excellent introduction

Marr's book is a quick and informative introduction to the subject, with some blind spots. To mention the blind spots first: it is, as many such books are, heavily Western and Eurocentric in outlook. China and India are mentioned early on, in the roundup of the earliest civilizations, but then mostly drop out of the picture until they once again begin to impinge on Western sensibilities. Not much here either about the growth of the major world religions; the conflict between Christianity and Islam gets especially short shrift. The entire history of the Crusades is reduced to a couple of sentences; if you blink, you'll miss it. Marr spends far more time talking about the tulip mania that swept Holland in the early years of capitalism.

But what he does cover, Marr covers well, with plenty of anecdotes and surprising connections along the way. His coverage of Africa, like his coverage of India and China, mostly focuses on the interaction of Africa and Europe, but the story he tells about that interaction is electrifying (and horrifying). And he asks the big questions, such as the one I've always wondered about and which is seldom addressed so explicitly: granted that the life of hunter-gatherers was full of novelty and free time, and the life of farmers was filled with backbreaking, tedious labor, why did the human race opt for farming? (Marr makes the case that the farming came first, and then the increase in population, rather than farming being devised as a way to support an already increasing number of people.)

Marr is an unabashed proponent of the "great person" school of writing history. There's plenty of material here about Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Margaret Sanger, and Mao Zedong and the infamous Jiang Qing. He also weaves a discussion of technology into the narrative, including the technologies of war and medicine. His goal throughout is not to throw a bunch of names and dates at the listener, but to give a sense of individual personalities and the gradual unfolding of the larger story.

First-rate narration by David Timson.

Massive educational/time commitment but worth it!

If you could sum up A History of the World in three words, what would they be?

This is an excellently written and performed, lengthy audio-world-history book that kept my attention so well, I often fell asleep at night with it playing on my smartphone. As a guy who never enjoyed (world or US) history, I learned a tremendous amount from this well organized work. My coworkers joke that everyday I come into the office with a new 'factoid' about world history that startles and provokes their curiosity in much the same way it has mine.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

This book is heavy - every single orated sentence is a new learning point of world history. It took me a month (between other commitments) to complete this ... dare I say the War and Peace of world history audio books?

Excellent! Scholarly writing, beautiful narration.

Would you listen to A History of the World again? Why?

Yes. I will listen again and again, to review the information, and continue to understand the contexts.

Any additional comments?

David Timson is an excellent narrator for this book. He does an admirable job, beautifully inflecting his tone to match the text, keeping it interesting, and very hard to take the headphones off!

A very comprehensive book with a good narrator

This history of the world touched on every region of the world. It is well worth the time!

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.