مختصر ولكن جميل وممتع

واحد من اهم الكتب اللي قريتها في حياتي.. تاريخ العالم من قبل ظهور الانسان.. مرورا بتطور الكائنات و اختلاف البيئه.. و ظهور الانسان و تطوره من انسان بدائي و تكوين المجتمعات الاولي و بداية ظهور الحضاره و نظام الدوله الاول بمصر و العراق و الشام.. و تطور الانسان في مختلف اماكن العالم.. الحضاره الاغريقيه و الرومانيه.. ظهور الاديان السماويه و دورها الكبير في تغيير مجري البشريه.. تطور الحياه في اوروبا من عصور ظلام و سيطرة الكنيسه حتي تكوين الحضاره الصناعيه العظيمه و الحربين العالميتين.. احلي ما في الكتاب انه مش بس سرد لاحداث تاريخيه.. لا كمان بيركز جدا علي الجوانب الفكريه و تطور الكتابه و العقل البشري علي مدار التاريخ.. و الافكار الاجتماعيه و السياسيه في كل عصر.. كل ده في صوره شبه روائيه مترابطه.. كتاب مهم جدا لاي حد عاوز يعرف اكتر عن تاريخ الإنسانية

It is a strange thing to read a "history of the world," never mind a "short history of the world," never mind one that was published first in 1922. This particular edition was revised and reissued in 1946. H.G. Wells was regarded as a progressive in his day, but the modern reader can't help but be repelled by some of his presumptions. His outlook is harshly Euro-centric. While he finds things to admire in other peoples, he also doesn't hesitate to refer to them as "savage," "barbaric" or "childish" and "primitive." These habits should be forgiven for a couple of reasons. First, they persisted right up through at least the 1980s in some quarters, and second, when readers of 2124 look back on the histories that are being written now, they will probably find them just as blinkered and prejudiced as Wells seems to us.

Wells doesn't get to what most people would regard as "history" until 49 pages into this book with the chapter "The Beginnings of Civilization." The astronomy, biology and anthropology in those first 49 pages is even more out of date than the author's historiography. In the final chapter of the book he plunges through a lot of it again, presumably because so much was learned between 1922 and 1946. Even this recapitulation is woefully out of date.

But his rapid treatment of the ancient and classical worlds is fascinating. While he clearly admires the Greeks and Romans, he is quite acerbic about their shortcomings as well. His analysis of why various civilizations fell never fails to be interesting. His evaluation of all the Abrahamic religions is fairly even-handed. As an agnostic he is somewhat dismissive of all of them and at least can't be accused of chauvinism.

As he plunges through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the early Modern period his impatience with various civilizations, societies, and rulers is actually quite funny sometimes. The Short History of the World sometimes reads like the frustrated summation of an up and down season for an entire league of teams by an especially erudite sports columnist. And like a good columnist, Wells has principles that he expects the players to live up, and of course they don't always.

The progressive nature of his politics is revealed by his impatience with anything other than the greatest equity and freedom for the greatest number of people. Any group or ruler that wanders off toward authoritarianism, creation of a static elite hegemony or various other sins, gets a good scolding. Here is where his Euro-centrism comes out: he seems to believe that Europeans have a lock on this sort of society and of course we now know that is quite untrue.

Wells writes transparent, elegant prose and his history is not a recitation of facts, but instead an attempted explanation for how the history of our species hangs together. This is so ambitious an undertaking that it could never be a complete success, but it is quite worth to watch him fail at it in an interesting and consistent way.

Loved it. Very dense but incredible storytelling