Rating: 
Summary: Ignorant author, title to be changed
Review: I think it would be more appropriate to be named as "The European History" since it gives too little global view of the world history.
In my opinion, history is a great guidance in the human being's future development and civilization. Let's first forget the modern history of the new world like USA, Canada, Australia, and South America and only consider the world before these countries even existed. Among those 5000 years' civilization, Eastern civilization (including Chinese, Indian, Persian, Islamic, Japanese, and Korean, etc.) has been superior than or at least as great as Western civilization (represented by Greek, Roman, and British, etc.) for more than half of the time.
Don't forget the current domination of european culture is temporary! Don't forget the rises of China and India! Don't forget China is the only continuous civilization for over 5000 years! If you don't respect other people because of your ignorance or temporary richness, you won't be respected by others, sooner or later!
For the reviewer who defamed another reviewer with Chinese ancestry (called Chinaman by that reviewer), I just forgive your ignorance. We need more tolerance instead of hate in this more and more global world. God bless everyone!
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult and demanding, but definately worth it!
Review: I've had general interest in history before buying this book, and when I saw it at a library one day I thought that this would be a great introduction to real history! And I was right!The title of this book says it all, it's indeed the history of the world in a nutshell! However small size has an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that it's readable! Heck, I've studied books in college that are even bigger! The disadvantage, however, is that the interesting details must be omitted! Don't except to find those interesting stories about great kings and legendary leaders! Even the greatest of battles are merely touched upon! BUT... once you read this book, you'll know what part of history you're really interested in! An important note, it is very difficult to read! I bought a pocket-dictionary and attached it to this book, yet sometimes it didn't have some of the words the author used! But what did you expect?
Rating: 
Summary: Not the best reference material
Review: In finding a good general history book it's important to get one that is concise and touches the most important points of the culture, country, goverment, or religion that interests you. Tackling the subject of world history and being concise as well as being informative is a very huge undertaking and I don't envy and admire the ambitions of the author. But I also think that a work such as this would be best tackling by a group of contributors and not just one individual because that individual has specific tastes towards certain periods or aspects of history (e.g. war, culture, leaders, etc.) The book is obscure in its descriptions of events and the writing style is hard to grasp as it doesn't attempt to bring the reader into the body of work. The reading is dry and doesn't answer the questions a reader may have about a particular point in history. I tried to read something on the Byzantine empire and the conflict between different theologies and couldn't pick up on the nature of the conflict. It just seemed like the author would write on and onjust to fill up space. This book was made to be a reference book but it didn't really impress me in answering what I needed to satisfy my curiosity.
In picking up a history book, don't pick up this book but rather look for a book which comes from different writers who are experts in their specialized field and also reference other books should the reader decide to read further on the subject matter.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible
Review: In his introduction to this book, Roberts quotes a saying to the effect that a work of history should not reveal the author's "party, country, or religion." Sadly, Roberts utterly fails at his own goal. This book purports to give a global history, but it's mostly European history and a brief sprinkling of the other areas of the world that one might have heard of. To pick just one example that I found particularly egregious, the book goes into depth about Charlemagne and his ancestors (of limited historical importance), then devotes about 15 pages for 2000 years of Chinese history. I kid you not. I suspect this happened because the author just didn't know anything about China (or India) and couldn't be bothered to find out. Supposedly Roberts had a reputation as a distinguished professor, and I think the reputation made him complacent in writing this and trying to pass it off as some great world history. The editors who should have said something about it were probably loath to criticize such a "master." I was thinking that the new edition might fix some of these problems (since appreciation of globalism has become more prevalent), but no. Also, I suppose the book is marketed to mostly English speaking Westerners, so a little more detail about Europe may be inevitable. But it shouldn't be billed as some comprehensive history of the world when it makes such a ridiculously small effort to actually cover the world properly. A true hisotry of the world, propotional to all the areas of the world, would be an instant classic. Unfortunately, this book only makes you wish for it.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Enjoyable
Review: J. M. Roberts has written a very enjoyable one volume history of the world. It's true that it is "dense," but what can you expect from a history of the world. It took me a year to get through, but I'm not apologizing. In addition, I can't agree with the idea that Roberts ignores or even marginalizes other cultures. He spends significant portions of the book on the Middle East and the Far East, China and India in particular. Considering that I read the book in bits and pieces, if there is an overarching theme to the book, I didn't detect one. I did find Roberts' judgments balanced. Readers who are interested in studying various theories of history should consider Brander's STARING INTO CHAOS, a book describing the thought of Toynbee, Spengler and Sorokin.
Rating:
Summary: Very Enjoyable
Review: J. M. Roberts has written a very enjoyable one volume history of the world. It's true that it is "dense," but what can you expect from a history of the world. It took me a year to get through, but I'm not apologizing. In addition, I can't agree with the idea that Roberts ignores or even marginalizes other cultures. He spends significant portions of the book on the Middle East and the Far East, China and India in particular. Considering that I read the book in bits and pieces, if there is an overarching theme to the book, I didn't detect one. I did find Roberts' judgments balanced. Readers who are interested in studying various theories of history should consider Brander's STARING INTO CHAOS, a book describing the thought of Toynbee, Spengler and Sorokin.
Rating:
Summary: erudite, comprehensive, but unapologetcally biased
Review: Let me start by saying that this book should be called instead "History of Europe". Behind the pretense of a decent attempt at summerizing the history of the world, this book is, more than anything else, one man's nostalgia of the good old days of the great European power over the rest of the world. And even that part of history is twisted in this unfortunate book. The author, while being a venerated historian, didn't even bother to pretend to be unbiased. His personal views were constantly reflected in the tone of his story telling, and i can't say i agree with many of them. For e.g. he didn't hesitate to, actually he repeatedly, forcefully, emphasized that Christianity is the single most important thing that had happened to human civilization, to the extend of being unshamefully preachy. I agree, that Christianity is arguably the most dominant force in shaping European history, what i can't accept is the author's implication that all the influence of Christianity on civilization is beneficial, and if it is not for Christianity, we won't even be human anymore. Being an admirer of Pagan literature(Norse mythology, Celtics culture etc), i can't help but wondering if the world, or at least the medieval Europe would not be a better place if Christianity hadn't become so powerful and thus commited those atrocious crime against humanity in general.
Rating:
Summary: Too dense to be interesting
Review: Roberts gets two stars for packing the history of the world into a 1000+ pages with great accuracy and few oversites. He covers just about everything, but space limitations mean he must strip out all the interesting details and most analysis of the forces driving events. What's left is a bunch of capsule summaries strung together chronologically. There are no overarching themes or narrative to tie everything together. In short, this book is little better than a low-budget reference volume. It's about as interesting to read cover-to-cover as the encyclopedia.
Rating:
Summary: Great Edition of this wonderful History
Review: Roberts writes history wonderfully. This is the first edition of this wonderful History of the World I ever purchased. I've owned several editions of Roberts wonderful history book. All are worthwhile having and reading and using as general reference works. Speaking of this book specifically I would compare the excellence in quality of the book to the 11 volume "Story of Civilization" series by Wil Durant. Of course, Durant's works are in many cases outdated today. Roberts updated his work in order to "fix" things where evidence has leaned one-way or-another over the last several years, as well as to bring it up-to-date with the fall of the Soviet Union and the new global supremacy of the United States. Of course, Roberts only hits the highlights. But he doesn't ignore anything; even so-called minor issues are discussed. In many ways, he is outlining how the modern world came to be the way it is. All too much of what passes for history now a days is really little more than gossip about minor events in the relatively recent past. The grand sweep of historical events is often lost. Looking at well sells as history books today can make one cringe that somebody would read something, let alone write it. Because people lack and true appreciation and understanding of history, they seem to be electing leaders who also lack the willingness to learn from past events. Democracy is on - at the very lest - a tenitive rise. Leaders need to know how Rome or Britain affected things in the modern political landscape. Churchill made decisions that are still being played out in the Middle East and Iraq today. Roman and even ancient Greek leaders had to deal with the issues of in the Balkans in southeast Europe over two-millennia ago. You can't fully understand the former Yugoslavia without understanding Roman province carving and its long term affects on world history. How can leaders hope to make the best decisions if they don't understand the causes of the original problems? And since democratically elected leaders are, at least in the West, the norm now, people need to understand history in order to recognize people who understand it. Roberts tries to restore the grand scope to the matter of human history. Something people and our political leaders seem to have very much lost sight of now. True History, the whys and wherefores need more attention.
Rating:
Summary: Great Edition of this wonderful History
Review: Roberts writes history wonderfully. This is the first edition of this wonderful History of the World I ever purchased. I've owned several editions of Roberts wonderful history book. All are worthwhile having and reading and using as general reference works. Speaking of this book specifically I would compare the excellence in quality of the book to the 11 volume "Story of Civilization" series by Wil Durant. Of course, Durant's works are in many cases outdated today. Roberts updated his work in order to "fix" things where evidence has leaned one-way or-another over the last several years, as well as to bring it up-to-date with the fall of the Soviet Union and the new global supremacy of the United States. Of course, Roberts only hits the highlights. But he doesn't ignore anything; even so-called minor issues are discussed. In many ways, he is outlining how the modern world came to be the way it is. All too much of what passes for history now a days is really little more than gossip about minor events in the relatively recent past. The grand sweep of historical events is often lost. Looking at well sells as history books today can make one cringe that somebody would read something, let alone write it. Because people lack and true appreciation and understanding of history, they seem to be electing leaders who also lack the willingness to learn from past events. Democracy is on - at the very lest - a tenitive rise. Leaders need to know how Rome or Britain affected things in the modern political landscape. Churchill made decisions that are still being played out in the Middle East and Iraq today. Roman and even ancient Greek leaders had to deal with the issues of in the Balkans in southeast Europe over two-millennia ago. You can't fully understand the former Yugoslavia without understanding Roman province carving and its long term affects on world history. How can leaders hope to make the best decisions if they don't understand the causes of the original problems? And since democratically elected leaders are, at least in the West, the norm now, people need to understand history in order to recognize people who understand it. Roberts tries to restore the grand scope to the matter of human history. Something people and our political leaders seem to have very much lost sight of now. True History, the whys and wherefores need more attention.
| 
