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likeaduck's review against another edition
3.0
A quick sketch of world history from primordial slime and microorganisms to political slime, the war in Iraq, and global warming, it's given to sweeping assertions without showing its work, but what do you expect in forty thousand words? Very interesting to see the author's take on gender relations through the ages and the positive and negative effects of religion and industrialisation on human development and the planet at large. Very interesting in particular to see a secular, anticapitalist, environmentialist, anti-oppressive take on these developments.
This history makes an attempt to be inclusive of the histories not usually focused on by mainstream narratives, but doesn't quite manage to shift the Eurocentric/Coloniocentric* balance to a satisfying extent, possibly due to scarcity of information not preserved in mainstream Western histories. Again I'm not sure what it's fair to expect in novella-length, but I must admit I was expecting more than I got. Worryingly the format initially misled me into thinking there was even less focus outside of Europe than there eventually was, as the book covers the entire world through migration to the continents, then follows the traditional Western storyline through Egypt, Greece and Rome to Europe up to the beginning of colonialism, and then backtracks to catch up on what everyone else has been up to in the same time. Working more to flip that structure could have been effective there, I think.
*not a word
This history makes an attempt to be inclusive of the histories not usually focused on by mainstream narratives, but doesn't quite manage to shift the Eurocentric/Coloniocentric* balance to a satisfying extent, possibly due to scarcity of information not preserved in mainstream Western histories. Again I'm not sure what it's fair to expect in novella-length, but I must admit I was expecting more than I got. Worryingly the format initially misled me into thinking there was even less focus outside of Europe than there eventually was, as the book covers the entire world through migration to the continents, then follows the traditional Western storyline through Egypt, Greece and Rome to Europe up to the beginning of colonialism, and then backtracks to catch up on what everyone else has been up to in the same time. Working more to flip that structure could have been effective there, I think.
*not a word
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