One would imagine that a history of the world has, by now, been done to
death. We know when the ‘Big Bang’ went off (give or take a millennium or
two), we know when the dinosaurs met their doom, and we even have it nailed
as to where we all came from. However, there are always ‘holes’ in our
knowledge and I was hopeful that Andrew Marr’s History of the World
(ISBN978-1-4472-3682-5, Pan Books 2013) might help the total picture, or
make it more sensible than before.
I immediately warmed to the book where Marr begins with, “Writing a history
of the world is a ridiculous thing to do. The only case for doing it, and
for reading it, is that not having a sense of world history is even more
ridiculous.” With those opening sentences, Andrew Marr had me sucked in.
Hooked. Thirsting for more.
He shies away from the Big Bang, dinosaurs and Charcharadon megalodons and
commences his take on our history around 70,000 years ago, with our
forebears including the one called “Mother”, and who lived a nomadic life in
Africa and with whom we all share some DNA.
Marr is able to combine sociology, geography, history, agriculture and hard
facts to show just how “we” began to evolve and does acknowledge “our” part
in the development of the world, writing, “We began, and we remain, agents
of instability.”
He divides our 70,000 years into eight slices, with Part 1 called Out of the
Heat and into the Ice, and the final section simply 1918-2012 Our Times.
There are also three sections with numerous color plates.
I found the section on the banking system quite fascinating, with the
Wisselbank in Amsterdam opening in 1609 which would value different
currencies that were being traded (for a fee of course)! One year later the
Amsterdam Bourse opened, which had limited trading hours, which gave it an
air of business-like frenzy, which has carried on through to today.
The book even shows the origin of the German swastika.
Marr manages to see a common thread in the American Civil War, Saigo
Takamori’s Samurai warrior’s last stand and the Scots at Culloden in 1746.
If nothing else, Instability reigned supreme - for a while.
It is also written in a most conversational style which make for easy
reading of what can be heavy subject matter. For example, “When the Spanish
arrived in Mexico and Peru, they brought microbes and mayhem, but they also
brought monasteries and the mass.” And in discussion of the Nazca lines, “It
was proposed earlier that the Nazca had some kind of smoke filled air
balloon, but this theory has now crashed to earth.”
Any information about our past, is in my opinion, priceless, so at B. 468
for 565 pages, plus Notes, Index and a Bibliography this is a literary
bargain. Available at Bookazine (I got mine from The Avenue outlet) this
book has the answers for even the most enquiring minds as to where and why
in the History of the World.
This is an excellent book, very readable and highly recommended.
