Rating: 
Summary: Riveting material that should be in every student's library
Review: I could not put this book down! I truely enjoyed Fromkin's s writing style, its to the point, so readable and firmly rooted in logic.Fromkin's ideas may encourage a debate that will and should awake the modern world. He has certainly struck a cord in this amateur historian.
Rating: 
Summary: Thoughtful Review of History
Review: The author attempts the near impossible: to summarize world history in a quick easy to read volume. What is interesting is the author manages to reach the goal. I have read a very large number of history books, but I have seldom read one so pithy. The author hits home again and again with thoughtful summarizing concepts that attempt to put history into a larger perspective - one that pulls history together in a comprehensible fashion. The book manages to show how the beginnings of history tie into the present.I recommend this book to anyone interested in history, and especially those who want to know how all these seemingly unrelated facts and events fit together. One can decide the framework does not really fit the facts, but it is undeniable the framework pulls the facts together in a cogent way. A way that makes history approachable and interesting. A thought provoking book. A must read for any history enthusiast.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful Review of History
Review: The author attempts the near impossible: to summarize world history in a quick easy to read volume. What is interesting is the author manages to reach the goal. I have read a very large number of history books, but I have seldom read one so pithy. The author hits home again and again with thoughtful summarizing concepts that attempt to put history into a larger perspective - one that pulls history together in a comprehensible fashion. The book manages to show how the beginnings of history tie into the present. I recommend this book to anyone interested in history, and especially those who want to know how all these seemingly unrelated facts and events fit together. One can decide the framework does not really fit the facts, but it is undeniable the framework pulls the facts together in a cogent way. A way that makes history approachable and interesting. A thought provoking book. A must read for any history enthusiast.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully concise account of the key drivers of us.
Review: The beauty and genius of this book is its brevity, its focus. Fromkin's thesis is clearly presented and he provides just enough detail to support it yet resists the temptation to excessively elaborate on it. This book should be read by all for its grand theme is revelant to us all.
Rating:
Summary: puts the history of civilization into complete context
Review: The book is wonderful! The history is of ideas and key trends. There are no dates, no people. He does a wonderful job tying everything together. Too often history is presented in a manner that shows us the trees, but not the forest. The author shows us the forest. The chapter on America explains in only 20 pages the significance of our country better than any book I've read. It's a "thinking" book. Even though it's only 200+ pages, I found myself stopping to think about key paragraphs every few pages. He put all of history's key players, wars, countries, etc. into complete context with each other.
Rating:
Summary: The eight giant steps of man
Review: There are 8 crucial development stages in the history of mankind identified by Fromkin in this book. Before you can take a giant step though, you have to learn how to crawl. This is especially true if your subject is as large as universal history - the story of the world since the inception of civilization. It's appropriate then that the book begins with the origins of man.'Becoming Human' is the first of the eight steps, quickly followed by 'Inventing Civilzation'. Each step is centered on a significant human achievement; here we learn about the discovery of agriculture and the building of the first cities. Step 3 is 'Developing a Conscience' which focuses on the emergence of religions and moral systems simultaneously in separate cultures. Other steps, in order, are: 'Seeking a Lasting Peace' 'Achieving Rationality''Uniting the Planet''Releasing Nature's Energies' and lastly 'Ruling Ourselves' With such a daunting spread of history, it's quite a challenge for Fromkin to properly explain the main elements of it to readers, to allow us to get a meaning and feel for the whole - especially if you do it in 222 pages. Fortunately the author is equal to it. He obviously had to 'cut and carve' history to fit in here. In answering questions such as - Why have some societies thrived and others disappeared? What from the past is a reliable guide to the future? - Fromkin obviously had to make some choices in the book. He admits that "telling one story necessarily means not telling another". The art of good history then is not only being aware of your biases but having sufficient style to be able to tell the story. Fromkin's style is conciseness, clarity and easy reading. He is able to contain complex ideas or events in short sentences - "the war resumed in 1939-1945 and Germany lost again" and he can describe the work of great men and women of culture in a few words. Writing about Galileo, Bacon and Descartes, he says they were "men of skepticism in thought and moderation in action". Two recurring themes in the book are that change is the only constant throughout history and that the importance of culture (specifically religion and arts), can not be overstated. In the last few chapters Fromkin engages in what is becoming a favorite habit of historians - crystal ball gazing, looking to the future and speculating. It's a very tricky thing to do because history is only history when it's in the past. Anyway Fromkin sounds plausible when he says that the problems of the future will be in the areas of population and the environment. Overall he is rather optimistic about our prospects, - for the US specifically and for humanity in general. The 'Way of the World' is short, concise, easy to read and a useful survey of humanity.
Rating:
Summary: Fromkin, the cautious optimist.
Review: This book is not only a brief history of humanity described in 8 grand stages but also a "how-to" book for western civilization's success in the 21st century. Very profound and insightful is the author in his interpretations of the past and in his vision of the future's possibilities. For me, this book has a permanent place in my library - a gem of a book for history buffs. A minor suggestion is that the last two paragraphs in the book should be shifted to the front as the preface. Also, I might suggest to future readers to read the short summaries of each of the first 8 grand steps of humanity's progress located in chapter 10 or 11 before reading the main chapters themselves.
Rating:
Summary: Fromkin, the cautious optimist.
Review: This book is not only a brief history of humanity described in 8 grand stages but also a "how-to" book for western civilization's success in the 21st century. Very profound and insightful is the author in his interpretations of the past and in his vision of the future's possibilities. For me, this book has a permanent place in my library - a gem of a book for history buffs. A minor suggestion is that the last two paragraphs in the book should be shifted to the front as the preface. Also, I might suggest to future readers to read the short summaries of each of the first 8 grand steps of humanity's progress located in chapter 10 or 11 before reading the main chapters themselves.
Rating:
Summary: Fromkin, the cautious optimist.
Review: This book is not only a brief history of humanity described in 8 grand stages but also a "how-to" book for western civilization's success in the 21st century. Very profound and insightful is the author in his interpretations of the past and in his vision of the future's possibilities. For me, this book has a permanent place in my library - a gem of a book for history buffs. A minor suggestion is that the last two paragraphs in the book should be shifted to the front as the preface. Also, I might suggest to future readers to read the short summaries of each of the first 8 grand steps of humanity's progress located in chapter 10 or 11 before reading the main chapters themselves.
Rating: 
Summary: laughable
Review: This book will tell you nothing about "history". It reads more like a novel and uses a series of literary devices which do violence to the material it deals with. Human history is not a story - why should it be, it doesn't have an "author". Real rubbish.
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