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.

A Different Type of History Course

I had alot of reservations about this course after seeing one of the lowest average review ratings for any of the Great Courses. But a course encompassing all of world history was something that intrigued me enough to give it a shot (even if going in I knew it wouldn't be able to go into much detail).

I am glad I didn't let the negative reviews stop me. I can certainly see the shortcomings that would prompt one to provide a poor review but on the whole I did not think this was a bad course at all and certainly not deserving of a 3.3 average rating.

I thought it offered an innovative approach to studying world history. Instead of discussing one civilization in one full lecture followed by the next civilization in the next lecture (typical of other history courses in general and Great Courses in particular) this course's approach truly involved a synchronistic comparison of multiple civilizations or religions that were contemporaries of one another....all in the same lecture. I thought this was one of the main (only) negatives of one of my all-time favorite courses: "History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective". It was excellent in covering any given specific empire but often did not provide perspective of what else was going on in the world at that time (contemporary empires would be discussed in the next lecture but the full picture of world affairs at a specific time was lost).

This approach allows one to truly get a history of social interactions, connectedness, conflicts, and trade/economies in humanity's time on earth.

He focuses discussion on political, economic, cultural, and social trends in these defined world history periods:
o Classical period (1000 BC to 500 AD)
o Post Classical period (500-1450)
o Early Modern period (1450-1750)
o The Long Century (1750-1914)
o The Contemporary Period (1914-present)

Highlights for me included lecture 9 on the collapse of the classical empires and lecture 14 on Japan, Russia, Southeast Asia, and Western Europe imitating more developed societies in the post classical period.

While I give the approach and identification of general themes an A, unfortunately, the delivery leaves alot to be desired and I think this is where the poor reviews come in.

While Professor Stearns certainly brings some interesting discussions to the table, the fact of the matter is his teaching style is simply not very engaging or full of much personality which means when there are lectures that do not involve a topic that is interesting to me, it is hard for him to keep me engaged or draw me in. I hate judging a professor by whether he/she makes things interesting or not but the reality is this stuff matters in assessing my feelings on a course. Learning is the mission here but so is a desire to be entertained in a way so as to make an 18 hour journey worth my time. He just doesn't bring things to life.

Professor Stearns goes out of his way to talk up non-western civilizations and talk down western civilizations especially in the early going. While I understand a World History approach is not supposed to be slanted towards western civilization specifically, he goes overboard resulting in the pendulum swinging way too far the other way.

He especially seems to consider ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and western Europe as inferior in just about every way to China or India to the point it seems to pain him to say anything good about them or when he does he qualifies it such as calling it “dumb luck” or never failing to remind us that the west "stole" certain innovations from China and used them for their own purposes---yet there is no acknowledging their adaptiveness. In trying to provide a balanced view he does the opposite and one is left wondering when a balanced view of the west will be provided.

How many times does he have to remind us this is not a western civilization course? We get it. We're adults. Tell us once. We don't need the qualification/warning multiple times. I think we can appreciate a lecture or discussion without him needing to remind us time and time again that there are other parts of the world than just the west.

He obviously uses the word “obviously” so many obvious times, even when the point he is making is not necessarily obvious, that I am obviously annoyed!

There are better history courses out there: "Big History" excels in discussing world history pre-agriculture and "History of the Ancient World" will provide much more details of civilizations/bring things to life but for what this course sets out to do (identify greater historical trends across time periods by comparing contemporary civilizations) I have to admit it does indeed succeed and is a very solid, good course.

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.