A Short History of the World, largely inspired by Wells’ earlier 1919 work The Outline of History, is a monumental account of the physical, spiritual, and intellectual evolution of the human race; and chronicles key events of humanity’s development. The book brings to light the continuity of history and provokes thoughts on future implications of our scientific and intellectual progress. It examines historical insight to bear on the Neolithic era, the rise of Judaism, the Golden Age of Athens, the life of Christ, the rise of Islam, the discovery of America, the Industrial Revolution, and a host of other subjects. It starts with the origin of the Earth, goes on to explain the development of the Earth and life on it, reaching primitive thought and the development of humankind from the cradle of civilisation. The book ends with the outcome of the First World War, the Russian famine of 1921, and to League of Nations in 1922.
This book can be read “straightforwardly almost as a novel is read” and indeed, this story of Earth, from its very formation and the first appearance of homo sapiens through the Russian Revolution and the reconstruction after World War I, reads like the most thrilling adventure story ever told. Though it has been factually supplanted by scholarship that came after it, this remains an engaging history, a classic of science fact from one of the fathers of modern science fiction. In 1934, Albert Einstein recommended the book for the study of history as a means of interpreting progress in civilisation. Breath taking in scope, this thought-provoking masterwork remains one of the most readable and rewarding of its kind.
Herbert George Wells (21 September, 1866, Bromley, Kent, England—13 August, 1946, London) was English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian. He was prolific in many genres, writing dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, satire, biography, and autobiography, and even including two books on recreational war games. He is best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds; and such comic novels as Tono-Bungay and The History of Mr. Polly. Most of his books were very well-received, and had a huge influence on many younger writers, including George Orwell and Isaac Asimov. Wells also wrote many popular non-fiction books and used his writing to support the wide range of political and social causes in which he had an interest, although these became increasingly eccentric towards the end of his life. He is often called a “father of science fiction”, along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback.
