History Of The World

In Bite Sized Chunks

By Emma Marriot

Genre: Historical

After reading this historical reference book about the brief but long history of the world, I have learned more about the world quicker then I would have ever imagined. Besides the fact that the book was a reference book, I found it intriguing to learn so much about our world, and our history, in bite sized chunks. From the Mesopotamians in the fertile crescent, to the independence of Australia. I especially liked the book because of its interesting facts, learning about different civilization backgrounds, and reading a short, but descriptive history book.

What I thought made the book interesting, wasn’t just because I like learning about history, but also because the book included facts that were completely new to me. Learning previous history, I learned some facts that I didn’t know as much about, however, in this book, no matter how brief the segments in history were, I feel as if I learned facts that I would have never’ve known about. For example, the numerical system that we use today had been discovered, and adopted, from Arabia, however, recent evidence have shown that the numerical system is from north western India. I found that the facts were also correctly cited as well. At the end of the book I had found that all of the facts had been properly cited and were found from proper sources.

Besides interesting facts about how our world has evolved, the one way that civilizations had evolved was through the mixing of cultures. Civilizations of the world had started in Mesopotamia/ However, the Mesopotamians would die out and then spread all over the world. The book had given information starting from the very beginning of civilization. I thought it was interesting to learn about how different cultures had evolved and had developed into countries of great power over time. Something interesting that I found in the book was how language had also evolved amongst the world. Spanish, Portugese, and French, are all Latin based languages, and eventually english would be considered one as well. The book contained information that I knew only little of, however, in the end of the book, my knowledge of civilization had grown very strong.

Lastly, my favorite subject in the whole book is its shortness. Although the book was only 170 pages, I found it very informative and descriptive. For a brief history of the world being printed in bite sized segments in a 170 page book, i found it to be very interesting. The book might seem like a very impossible situation, but, if you look at the format of how history was arranged; which was only about one and a half pages per event in history. I thought of this idea crazy until I started to find more and more details in each new historical period. Also, the book was split by regions of geography, and then reordered them in historical the proper historical timeline. However, I dislike the fact that the book only reaches the point of 1945, instead of 2000. Besides the lacking information of the twentieth century, I found the book very interesting and intriguing.

In conclusion, the book was very descriptive and informative. It had the basics of the worlds history and the civilizations of the past, and current day. The book provided great facts of the past and were properly evident in the amount of citations. I now have a greater understanding of the past civilizations from this book, and it had left me wanting to know more about the given civilizations. I feel as if I would learn more about the worlds story through a short book, then reading a long book that is for a class instead of leisure.

Citations: O’marra, Michael. “The History of the World in Bite-Sized Chunks.”Goodreads. Goodreads.com, 1 Sept. 2012. Web. 18 Jan. 2016.