The New Penguin History of the World

Rating:
Summary: Still terrible even after being "updated"
Review: In his introduction to the earlier edition, 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 20 pages for over 1000 years of Chinese history. I kid you not.

Roberts tries to justify this by saying how Europeans have been so influential in the world, but this is only partly true. China has over one billion people who have largely remained isolated from the world. It's true that one can explain a lot of history without much need for the details of China, but it shortchanges a huge mass of humanity and their doings, no matter what their impact on the West has been. [Let me note that a reviewer of the earlier edition, also named Jim, makes a similar point about China as well; it is coincidence: he and I are not the same person].

Moreover, with China's rising influence over the already Sinic-based cultures of Southeast Asia, for example, or India's likely rise in the coming years, any claims to a "European dominated" world are already becoming obsolete. The truth is, the finer points of the Peloponnesian War are not really more important than the details of the Tai, Mon, and Kymer kingdoms, for example.

I suspect the real reason for such imbalance was because the author just didn't know anything about China (or India) and couldn't be bothered to find out. Supposedly Roberts has 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 history 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: An updated version of ISBN: 0140154957
Review: Not having read his older version I have no idea how it compares or how much has been changed and/or added. My first attempt at a straight through read of a book on the subject, I am confident I made a good choice in picking up this particular book.

Some have said that this book suffers from an over-abundence of euro-centrism. I would disagree. If your conception of a fair portrayl of world history is the collection of "national" (for lack of a better word) histories each given an equal amount of attention (or even an amount of attention proportinate to their achievments within their borders), then this book will certainly not satisfy you. In this book, great civilazations (such as the chinese, japanese, and native americans) that were more isolationist in ideology get compartively little attention because they contributed compartively little to the lives of those living outside their oversight. Therefore, in selecting national histories to focus on, Roberts spends a large portion of the time discussing the history of europeans because they played a large role ("for better or for worse" he acknowledges) in the histories of other people. That europeans, for better or for worse, have succeded more then any other people in spreading their idealogies and influences is less a matter of opinion and more a matter of fact.


So if you are interested in a 1200-page, slightly sophisticated introduction to world history, with a particular focus on war and economics, I would heartily recommend this book.