Linhtalinhtinh

I have approached a number of history books, and I remain convinced that they would always address some problems in this and that way, something will always come up, recent history will be most devoted about half of the book, and so on. What makes me keep reading these historical stories is simply to find another appealing writing, or some fascinating small details. This one is so much better. It transforms my model completely. It opens up totally new ways of looking into the world.

If you want to get a solid history background, to be aware of the most important events, to, for example, know the Greek and Roman's development, China's blossom, Enlightenment and New World, you'd better opt for another book. A History of the World in 100 Objects is in no way a conventional history book. It gives such a balanced view to every single part of the world that sometimes I feel that the writer is an international citizen, or at probably an alien, to be not so talkative of Western culture (still, he is proudly British and does approach other cultures based on a Western starting point). This book will lead you to some unexpected objects, some unexpected events, some unexpected people and land, and still then tell you the whole general development of the world. In fact, the book goes far to produce a view that world is very much interconnected place, with great amount of exchange going on all the time.

Not only balanced in the number of the presence of different world's regions, the book is also fair to its time dimension. It is divided into 20 parts covering from about 2000 BC until 2010. Well, the modern time is given more objects of course, but not overly so. This history of objects is not skewed badly to the present compared to other books that I have read, which in my opinion is a great achievement. I am so much aware that, well, we are in no way more important than people in the past, we are in no way more "civilized", more "innovative", more "artistic" than them. We are very much the same.