A Short History of the World by the Sci Fi author H.G. Wells (The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds and many others) is an incredible piece of nonfiction. It paints with broad but interesting strokes the history of the world from 2 Billion years ago to the 1930s. His observations allowed me to see overall patterns in history, and to put all this fragmented concepts into a coherent frame. Super readable, super interesting, super informative, this 300 pages book should be required reading!
Why don't they include books like this into the high school curriculum? This one is much better than any history textbook I have ever seen! It focuses mostly on western history, and has a heavy focus on wars, which I loved, but has enough suggestions on other books to read if you are interested in a subject that you can easily keep reading more and more about anything.
If you consider yourself a human, or even if you live on the third planet away from a star called Sol and are literate, go read this very readable masterpiece.
Now! Seriously! It is a must read.
The maps in my edition of the books weren't very good or clear, so I complimented the book with Hammond Atlas of World History. The beautiful reference book has awesome maps and is very well written, but a bit on the pricey side (I bought it used).
It has been a lot of fun for the past days reading both books, putting all the little pieces of history that I knew together, and writing down a list of history books (so many!) that I would have to read. I've learned quite a bit.
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