A Brief History of the World

By: Peter N. Stearns, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Peter N. Stearns

Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

The construction of the great pyramids of Egypt, the development of democracy in ancient Greece, the glories of ancient Rome - these stories are familiar to students of history. But what about the rest of the world? How do the histories of China and Japan, or Russia, India, and the remote territories of Sub-Saharan Africa and South America fit in with commonly known accounts of Western traditions?

Learn the rest of the story with these 36 riveting lectures that survey the expanse of human development and civilization across the globe. From the invention of agriculture in the Neolithic era to the urbanized, technologically sophisticated world of the 21st century, you'll apprehend "the big picture" of world history. You'll examine and compare the peoples, cultures, and nations of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas to understand how, throughout history, peoples all over the world have connected and interacted, traded goods and technology, and conquered and learned from each other.

As you travel around the world and through time, Professor Stearns provides surprising insights that will overturn many of your assumptions about history. For instance, you'll see how the invention of agriculture brought with it a number of drawbacks, such as a new inequality between men and women and greater exposure to epidemic diseases. Fascinating episodes like these will give you a deep appreciation for the human experience as it was lived throughout the centuries.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2007 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2007 The Great Courses

Great Cadence, fascinating ideas - Excellent

I love the cadence of this speaker. It's obvious he's been a platform instructor for decades. He delivers the information at a speed that is slow enough to keep up with and adds emphasis and pauses to contribute drama.
What's more, I HATED history throughout my primary years and through my bachelor's degree. Part of the problem is the lack of context and meaning. I love this author because he doesn't presume to know all the answers. He points out where our approaches fail starting with the approach for how most of us have approached history from a highly narrow view for most of our lives. I love culture. And it's obvious that people are free. I also think that significant movements in history happened not because of big names like Napoleon or Kennedy but because of the individual efforts of thousands of nameless, faceless people making independent and freely contemplated decisions and subsequent actions.
He adds or tries to add these elements to our view of history.
What I love is how he shows us a lot of different frameworks like the economic framework of core and periphery and discusses and encourages us to think about how well they work and where they might not work.
He doesn't make a book that you are supposed to ingest and commit to memory, but rather helps each of us engage in internal debates about whether the ideas he is bringing are both from his own and others' theories. He encourages readers/listeners to reject or evaluate the ideas of history.
I started listening to this book because it was free but found I couldn't put it down and after some 15 hours of listening, when the free period was over, I had to buy it. I had to see what exciting theories and counter theories he was going to present next. I posted repeatedly on Facebook and LinkedIn with segments from the book. Yes! It's really that good.
I really wish he would narrate his other books. His other books aren't available as audiobooks and while he or his book publisher could commission a professional narrator, I prefer the nuance of the way he delivers his own ideas. I'd love to listen to more by this thought leader, but with a crushing full-time job, an elementary school student, and a side hustle, listening to books is the only way I can squeeze in reading time.

Good but for people who don't want a lot of depth

I liked that he gives you the big picture of history but if you're like me and you like great depth in each topic you should download the great history courses for each of those individual topics although this is still pretty good for people who want a little bit of everything and don't have the time to do what I mentions before and one last note he doesn't spend that much time talking about the classical period

Too obvious

It was a good audiobook but the historian used the word obviously way too many times for my liking. The things he thought were obvious weren’t obvious at all.

This was great!

Very interesting. I love the great courses. I majored in history in college, but even though this wasn't any new information for me I still found the lectures very interesting and enjoyable. Great for anyone with no background in history or for someone who wants a brief refresher.

Informative,...but will not be a recommendation.

I have more than 50 history audio books that mostly focus on ancient history and would rate this book in the lower top 50 list between 40-50.

Along but necessary read

World history is a daunting topic. This book is a great comprehensive, high-level review of that.

Not as interesting as I had hoped

Would you be willing to try another book from The Great Courses? Why or why not?

Yes - I have enjoyed listening to The Great Courses and learnt much from some of the lectures.

Any additional comments?

Kind of basic and the Prof seemed to be stretching to make some of the connections. It was boring at some points, and I felt that more detail to support the arguments would have been nice.

Global

In the beginning of this course, Peter Stearns goes to great lengths to define what he means by World History, and talks about it as a recent development. But haven't we been studying World History all our lives? Not really, he argues. What we were doing is Western Civilization, treating it as the only part of World History that mattered. What he's doing here is showing the Other Side of the Story, and this particular way of doing World History IS a new thing.

Inevitably, there's some imbalance in the approach. He tries to keep Western Europe and North America in the picture with a lesson here and there, but his main focus is on East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. The perspective he brings is truly global: Rome and Western Europe may have been in tatters, he says, but during that same period China and East Asia were thriving, so let's talk about what THEY were up to.

Inevitably, he glosses over some events, even some that would illustrate the issues he's discussing. For example, one of the lessons deals at length with slavery and its abolition. In the course of the lesson, he touches on the North American abolitionist movement and the difficulties faced by freed slaves in the latter part of the 19th century; but he never mentions the American Civil War. This isn't just chauvinism on my part. Nearly a million people died in that war, and the war's chief aim was the destruction of the South's slave-based economy. What could be more relevant to the point at hand?

It should also be noted that this is not a narrative history; it's more of a sociological and economic history. There's a lot of emphasis on trade, and not so much on the Great Men (and Women) who ruled the countries engaged in that trade.

Stearns has blocked out broad periods of time: the great river civilizations, prior to 1000 BCE; the Classsical period, from 1000 BCE to 500 CE; the Post-Classical period, to 1450 CE; the Early Modern period, to 1750 CE; the "long 19th century," up to the beginning of the First World War; and everything else since then. Within each of these periods, his treatment is more often thematic or geographical than chronological. He'll have lessons on Revolution, for example, or Gender Relations, or Globalization; and mixed in with these will be lessons that focus on Latin America or China.

Personally, I would prefer a juicier narrative. But Stearns is well-informed on all the topics he discusses, and he always has a packet of unusual facts, comparisons, or connections up his sleeve. (Who got most of the silver from the New World? If you said Spain, you'd be wrong: it was China. Understanding how that came about is one of the pleasures to be had from the course.)

Stearns has an unusual way of speaking that took some getting used to. Many of his sentences consist of lists - each item in the list ending with a rising inflection, like a question. Eventually I settled into the rhythm. The fact hat his lists are consistently interesting and well-organized helps.

Great general overview.

I'm happy with this series, but If you want in depth information this isn't for you. It's great for reviewing information, or if want to get into more specific subjects down the line.

main currents of world history

What did you love best about A Brief History of the World?

It gives you a way of thinking about world history in an abstractly practical - or practically abstract - way.

It focuses on the main themes, forces, topics, currents shaping it.

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

It's definitely not be listened to in a single sitting. Listen to one, two, three lectures a day.

Any additional comments?

I recommend it to anyone who wants to make sense of world history.