World History

The books, in order

1. 1

   History · 15 min

   Bulfinch's Mythology

   Thomas Bulfinch

   Myths worked as science before science: Persephone's absence was one of the answers the ancients gave for the arrival of winter.

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2. 2

   Science · 18 min

   Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

   Jared Diamond

   According to Diamond, of the tens of thousands of wild plants, only a handful could become reliable crops, and a good share of them were concentrated in the Fertile Crescent.

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3. 3

   History · 17 min

   SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

   Mary Beard

   For Beard, telling its own founding story with a fratricide inside the legend was no shame for Rome: it was a way of admitting, from the very first myth, that power there would come at a high price, even between brothers.

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4. 4

   History · 17 min

   Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

   Tom Holland

   A system of offices built to limit power only works as long as the competitors agree to wait their turn.

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5. 5

   History · 20 min

   The Romanovs

   Simon Sebag Montefiore

   A transformation can expand the capacity of the state and, at the same time, increase the suffering of those who carry it out. Judging progress requires looking at both achievements and human costs.

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6. 6

   History · 17 min

   The Guns of August

   Barbara W. Tuchman

   Training a generation of officers to believe that fighting spirit can replace artillery is dressing up a gamble as strategy.

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7. 7

   History · 16 min

   The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

   Christopher Clark

   For Clark, nearly the whole fate of the 1914 war was decided by a handful of ministers and generals shut away in rooms, answering to no parliament or public opinion.

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8. 8

   History · 17 min

   The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

   Peter Frankopan

   An empire that looks like nothing but destruction can also open a road: the Mongols killed a lot of people and still left trade safer than it was before the conquest.

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9. 9

   History · 17 min

   The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

   William L. Shirer

   A whole country that is humiliated and out of work becomes fertile ground for any simple promise of pride and order restored, even when the bill that follows is monstrous.

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10. 10

    History · 16 min

    Stalingrad

    Antony Beevor

    The rat war, when the fighting moved into hallways and basements, erased the advantage of tanks and artillery and shrank the distance between enemies to a few feet of wall.

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