The World: A Family History

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I wish this had been shorter. I don't think that could have been possible. I feel like I missed a lot, my mind would glaze over if I read it for too long, and since I borrowed it from the library and I had a limited time to read it I had to push myself and read more in one sitting that I would have liked to. I am not sure what the purpose is of trying to consolidate history of all earth in a single book. Is it a bit like climbing mountains – or buildings – to show he can do it? I felt at many times during the expedition that this was essentially a vanity project. In 1824, while the British hunters were still in the capital, Shaka was dancing when a would-be assassin speared him in the side. Shaka hunted down the hitmen, who were beaten to a pulp by the people, then he massacred the Qwabe tribe whom he decided to blame – though he rightly distrusted his own family. In 1827, his mother Nandi died mysteriously. She had disapproved of his purges, and may have protected a male baby born of his concubines: he either killed her in a rage or had her killed, like Nero. Zulu royalty were buried sitting up supported by the bodies of sacrificed henchmen, servants, concubines, strangled or buried alive. Killing anyone suspected of disloyalty, Shaka supposedly killed 7,000 people. After Nandi’s death he appointed his aunt Mnkabayi as Great She-Elephant.

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. In summary then, PMS’s romp is fun and helps depict an interconnected world since the beginning of history. But in jumping around like an energetic grasshopper he makes it quite difficult to follow, and you will need to read a more considered history of any particular period, to make real sense of it.

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In all honestly, nothing I say can possibly do justice to the immeasurable hard work of the author and every single person involved in bringing this book to life. I feel nothing but profound respect and admiration for this unbelievably relevant and crucial book, even more so because, despite its intimidating length and density, it is full of good humour. Montefiore’s] major achievement is to make us seetheworldthrough a different lens – to maketheunfamiliar familiar and, more important,thefamiliar unfamiliar. . . . [B]rings [history] most vividly, almost feverishly, to life.There is hardly a dull paragraph.” ― TheSpectator This cookie is set by Addthis. This is a geolocation cookie to understand where the users sharing the information are located. The Romanovs' is his latest history book. He has now completed his Moscow Trilogy of novels featuring Benya Golden and Comrade Satinov, Sashenka, Dashka and Fabiana.... and Stalin himself.

The World: A Family History of Humanity is the latest book written by Montefiore, a historian who has written books on Stalin and the Romanovs. His expertise is on the personal and political, writing about people in power in both their personal and professional lives. This book is a look through the entirety of human history from the first family who walked on the shores of Britain to Putins invasion of Ukraine. In this book you meet hundreds of characters through a series of dynasties across the world. The story is told through their interconnected world and often changes viewpoints from across the world in a broadly chronological format. I should mention, though, that Montefiore has provided an extensive reading list online, a resource which is vastly under-utilised by authors of history books; many would greatly benefit from the possibility of providing online many more photographs, illustrations and maps than are practicably available in a bound book. The Dutch traders of the VOC had founded Cape Town, where they settled thousands of poor Boers – farmers, devout Calvinists – who soon encountered the hunter-gatherer Khoikhoi (Bushmen or Hottentots to the Europeans), descended from the original inhabitants of the continent, pushed southwards by the Bantu who migrated from west Africa. The Dutch imported slaves from Dahomey, Angola and Mozambique to work their plantations while breaking the Khoikhoi, who, crushed between Bantu and Dutch, decimated by smallpox and reduced to indentured labour close to slavery, almost ceased to exist. The settlers, who called themselves Afrikaners, expanded northwards and eastwards, thus encountering the Nguni, herders of long-horned cattle, who were moving south conquering their own kingdoms. As such episodes suggest, it was one thing to hold power, another to pass it on peacefully. “Succession is the great test of a system; few manage it well,” Montefiore observes. Two distinct models coalesced in the thirteenth century. One was practiced by the Mongol empire and its successor states, which tended to hand power to whichever of a ruler’s sons proved the most able in warfare, politics, or internecine family feuds. The Mongol conquests were accompanied by rampant sexual violence; DNA evidence suggests that Genghis Khan may be “literally the father of Asia,” Montefiore writes. He insists, though, that “women among nomadic peoples enjoyed more freedom and authority than those in sedentary states,” and that the many wives, consorts, and concubines in a royal court could occasionally hold real power. The Tang-dynasty empress Wu worked her way up from concubine of the sixth rank through the roles of empress consort (wife), dowager (widow), and regent (mother), and finally became an empress in her own right. More than a millennium later, another low-ranking concubine who became de-facto ruler, Empress Dowager Cixi, contrasted herself with her peer Queen Victoria: “I don’t think her life was half so interesting and eventful as mine. . . . She had nothing to say about policy. Now look at me. I have 400 million dependent on my judgment.” Regardless of my personal reading experience, it would be a crime not to mention the extraordinary and out-of-this-world research behind this book. Spanning millennia and continents, it covers the history of the world as we know it from the perspective of prominent families, some more well-known than others, but all of them fascinating nonetheless. I was mesmerised by this comprehensive look at world history and ultimately saddened to realise that, throughout the years, conflict, death and the suffering of millions of humans usually begin with the greed of a few.Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? On the other hand though, it’s worth recording that SSM does perform a kind of service through all the schoolboy chortling. If the book is a bit light on man’s spiritual journey in ancient times, it’s clear enough that most other historians have failed to convey what obsessive and saucy boys and girls we have always been, everywhere. It is simply amazing how many different cultures were fixated on genitalia. From “Abarsam [who] had himself castrated and sent his testicles to the king in a box of salt – surely an example of protesting too much”. to ”After [Andonilos] had been hung upside down in the Hippodrome, his eyes were gouged out, his genitals amputated, his teeth extracted, his face burned..” Reading this book without any prior knowledge of Irish History one would come away with the conclusion that the most significant thing that happened in Ireland in the 1840s (or any other time between the late 17th and late 20th centuries) was that an aristocratic lady called Eliza Lynch changed her name to Lola Montez and seduced the mad King of Bavaria. Interestingly, he describes an earlier visitor to a Central European Court, Edward Kelly as being an "Earless Irish Necromancer" though he was born in Gloucester and little is known of his ancestry. The cookie is set by Krux Digital under the domain krxd.net. 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From the New York Times best-selling author of The Romanovs—a magisterial world history unlike any other that tells the story of humanity through the one thing we all have in common: families In this work of astonishing scope and erudition, Simon Sebag Montefiore interweaves the stories of the servants, courtiers, and kings, pioneers, preachers, and philosophers who have made history. A brilliant synthesis that will impart fresh insight to even the most learned readers.”— Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State A delightfulworldhistory, told through influential families. . . .Thedevice of weaving togetherthe past usingthemost enduring and essential unit of human relations is inspired. It lets readers empathize with people who helped shape historical events and were shaped bythem. . . .Themethod also allowstheauthor to cover every continent and era, and to give women and even children a voice and presence thatthey tend to be denied in more conventional histories. . . . Despitethebook’s formidable length,there is never a dull moment.Thestory moves at pace across terrible battles, court intrigues, personal triumphs and disasters, lurid sexual practices and hideous tortures. . . .Theauthor tellsthese stories with verve and palpable relish fortheunbridled sex and inventive violence that run throughthem. His character sketches are pithy and witty. . . .Thefootnotes, often short essays inthemselves, havetheacid drollery of Edward Gibbon. . . . Overall this book is a triumph and a delight, an epic that entertains, informs and appalls in enjoyably equal measure.” — TheEconomist The book is written in a curious mixture of styles. There is the tabloid argot (“Philadelphos supposedly kept nine paramours, of whom the star was a badass chariot-racing Greek beauty Belistiche.”). And there is a prolific use of genital vocabulary which would never have seen light of day in tabloid publications. But there is also a slightly exhibitionist use of rare words. “Bertie, the twenty-five-year-old pinguid Prince of Wales”, for example. And the Arab world is “fissiparous”. At times, this becomes intrusive and obfuscatory. One chapter contains “frizelate” or various forms of it, in several instances. Neither my collection of dictionaries, nor ChatGPT, recognise this word, although it would seem, from the context, to have some sort of sexual connotation. Succession meets Game of Thrones.” — The Spectator • “The author brings his cast of dynastic titans, rogues and psychopaths to life...An epic that both entertains and informs.” — The Economist, Best Books of the Year

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Succession meets Game of Thrones." - The Spectator  "The author brings his cast of dynastic titans, rogues and psychopaths to life...An epic that both entertains and informs." - The Economist, Best Books of the Year Succession meets Game of Thrones.”— The Spectator•“The author brings his cast of dynastic titans, rogues and psychopaths to life…An epic that both entertains and informs.”— The Economist, Best Books of the Year Gripping. Montefiore’s characters snare our sympathy and we follow them avidly. This intricate at times disturbing, always absorbing novel entertains and disturbs and seethes with moral complexity. Characters real+fictitious ring strikingly true.It is to a large extent Tolstoyan …..” The Australian

Because there is was so much information, the brief information we get on each family constantly left me wanting more about each family, some more than others but I was left unsatisfied for the entire book. Yet as I took in these much smaller stories of each family, I started to see a much larger story - the history of humanity. How it all happened, how all the little parts fit together to make a much bigger history. It was pretty incredible. I was able to understand in a much clearer way how things played out over the course of humanity, why things are the way they are now. Another fascinating aspect (for me) was the placing in a wider context of the great empires of old. In the west we have all possibly tended to assume/learn that the Egyptian, Roman, and Chinese empires were the colossal edifices in history, gigantic peaks that loomed over anything else for centuries. I exaggerate a little maybe. But SSM makes no attempt to sex them up in such a way, describing them instead in the same level terms as all the others – the Babylonians, Persians, Seleucids, Hittites and so on – and to my mind makes it all the better for that. The mountain range was bigger than one might think. Another of my private prejudices that crumbled is the sense that mighty China has somehow always been a separate planet, with its own civilisation remote and disconnected from the rest of us. To a large degree this is probably true enough: but it is fascinating to deduce from the text that China, with its several incursions into Turkic areas and vice versa, was a more active participant in world history than I had imagined. Xi’s Belt and Road initiative is not quite as precedent-setting as one might think. Neither, perhaps, is the Chinese civilisation quite so ground-breaking as the Chinese would have us believe.In this epic, ever-surprising book, Montefiore chronicles the world’s great dynasties across human history through palace intrigues, love affairs, and family lives, linking grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion, and technology to the people at the heart of the human drama. It’s written quite readably, it’s not hard to read, but I can’t say that I really enjoyed it as I might enjoy a good novel. I rather generously award three stars in recognition of the author’s achievement in covering the vast span of world history, and covering people and events on every continent. I rather doubt that I’ll ever reread the whole thing, but I may sometimes use it for reference and dip into it. Elderly woman fleeced: How scamsters obtained her death certificate, forged house deed, took Rs 90 Lakh loan Mosheshoe’s family still rules Lesotho. Shaka accused Mzilikazi, a grandson of Zwide, of keeping cattle prizes for himself. The punishment was death. Mzilikazi escaped with his Ndebele clan into Transvaal and then Zimbabwe, where his Matabele kingdom confronted the Shona: the two tribes dominate Zimbabwe today. Shoshangane turned his victory into the Gaza kingdom in southern Mozambique, forcing the Afro-Portuguese prazeiros to pay tribute. Sobhuza, ruler of the Dlamini, migrated to avoid Shaka, founding Swaziland – Eswatini – named after his son and successor Mswati. It likewise is still ruled by his family. DM/ ML