BOOK REVIEW: High-octane history, told in short stories
Twenty-three ‘acts’, 1,300 pages, 5,000 years — Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The World is an intricate, painstakingly detailed and fascinating ride through the ages. For the most part, it’s a chronicle of the visceral human factors that have influenced the course of history
20 April 2023 - 05:00
Is a historian hubristic if he sets out to write the entire history of the world? The task would seem near impossible in terms of the time and knowledge required. And history is unfolding in the events of today, so could the work ever be respectably comprehensive? Above all, because perspective is everything, what lens would be applied?
British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, best known for his biographies of Stalin and Catherine the Great and an authoritative work on Jewish history, Jerusalem: The Biography, has attempted to rise to these challenges in The World: A Family History. ..
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