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

The world unfolds

It hard not to have a fresh view of the world and culture around you after taking a 2 dozen hour ride from humanity as nomadic tribes to today's urbanized globalized world. You will know the meaning of "history repeats itself" as you will see the same struggles, fears, movements and behaviours today as you did 2000 years ago...the only difference now is we carry iphones and word travels a bit faster

Great book.

I enjoyed this book very much and I highly recommend combination of Kindle text version with this audio.

25 hours of enjoyment

As soon as I saw this book I knew I was going to love it. 25 hours of the history of the world, based on a BBC production. The made-for-TV origins of this book meant that it was always likely to be entertaining and not too highbrow, and that's exactly what it is. A really good listen, starting with our hunter-gatherer ancestors and ending with today's problems of overpopulation and global warming, with quite a bit of other stuff in between.

The author unashamedly ascribes to the 'individual' human theory of history, whereby the story of the world has been significantly shaped by the actions of particular people. In many cases, history could have taken a radically different turn if, by chance, something had happened differently. An obvious example is that Hitler survived World War One, and the author believes that the course of history might have gone drastically differently if he had not – there wouldn’t necessarily have been a ‘substitute’ Hitler waiting in the wings to do what he did. Of course he also acknowledges the importance of the general flow of history, but this audiobook is mostly the story of important people and the things they did.

One of the difficult things about taking on such a big subject is that the world is a big place and at any given time there are many different histories rolling out in the different continents. So he tells us the histories of Africa and China and America, but I guess, as this was a BBC production, the focus may be a bit biased in the later centuries towards the influence of Britain. This doesn’t offend me because I’m English and was indoctrinated as a schoolboy into thinking that the Battle of Hastings and the Battle of Britain were landmark events in World History, when the rest of the world might see them as minor struggles on a small island. But I’d be interested to know if non-British listeners to this audiobook found it excessively Brit-centric.

Go ahead and listen, and I’ll look out for your reviews.

excellent!

thoughtful and provoking and what every human needs to hear. And also a little bleak. sometimes being a member of the homo sapiens club is not all its cracked up to be.

Fascinating history of the world

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was extremely interesting and helped me to gain a better appreciation of our world history.

Majestuoso!

Increíble saber cómo llegamos a este momento, brindando y relacionado el contexto y el devenir de este Homo Sapiens

Entertaining yet banal

This is a history of the world written by a journalist and this is easy to tell. Too much focus on recent events - within world history everything past 1900 can really be considered recent - and with too little attention for the broad strokes, this volume doesn't stand apart. Marr's histories of Britain are far better than this mediocre dabble with world history.

That being said, the book is an entertaining listen. Just don't expect anything new or special.

Not organized!

This guy is all over the place. You have to know something about history to be able to keep up. Hopping over timelines back and forth confused the shit out of me. Maybe someone smarter with a better understanding of the worlds history may enjoy it more. That’s why I feel like this book appeals to smart historians more than it does to your average person trying to learn about world history. The book is not organized in explaining events in corresponding timelines. Confuses the hell out of you if you’re trying to retain the very well articulated information without having any former knowledge of historical events. It’s a great book, yes. But it’s not a book you could easily learn from. You better have Google ready to go on another device so you can search and organize the lessons being taught in order for you to retain it. Maybe I’m just dumb? I don’t know. I just know I wasn’t able to learn as well as I though I would.

Is it 1875?

Reads like a Victorian-style history. The Big Man approach to history isn't especially interesting to me

Wrong Title

This audiobook should be titled; A PC History of years 1700-2010 with a Short Introduction about the History of the World

First let me say the narration is extremely good, one of the best I've heard.

In general if you want a brief history of the ancient world this will do, the author does a great job of keeping it interesting (I say brief since less than half the book is focused on this). Unfortunately the political correctness really starts to heavily influence the 1700+ world to the point of silliness. It's not all the time and it's by no means the worst I've heard, the author I believe attempts to be fair and balanced but just isn't able to do so. I recommend you have a good grasp on the modern world when listening to this otherwise you'll go away about as smart as your average high schooler, which is an insult in case you didn't realize it. If you don't already have a good grasp on modern history I'll go as far as to say this book will actually make you dumber. It's very difficult to recommend this book despite the interesting story and excellent narration. I really wish the author would have spent much more of his time on the pre-modern world since that's where I learned the most -- but even in this case it wasn't much. I can honestly say I'm not sure I learned hardly anything about the modern world and was more frustrated with what the author left out than allowed in (although unlike the other reviewer I found the tulip part interested since that is one thing I did now know about).

3 stars overall, 3 stars for the story due to it being unbalanced and too politically correct on modern subjects and a strong 5 stars for the narration.