About the Author

From the dawn of humankind to today’s global complexities, this monumental volume presents world history from an original perspective that provides fresh insights with every colorful spread. Few references are as invaluable, all-inclusive, and satisfying to browse. For readers of every age, world history is easily accessible, depicted as never before—so that events occurring concurrently all over the world may also be viewed at-a-glance together. For example, Texas Instruments launched the pocket calculator the same year the Soviet Union launched the first manned space station, in 1971. Columbus sailed from Spain the year Martin Behaim constructed a terrestrial globe in Nuremberg. The California Gold Rush followed the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s, and the Greek dictatorship of Papadopoulos is overthrown the same year Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia is deposed and U.S. president Nixon resigns, in 1974. The book’s innovative time line actually sets it apart, allowing readers to scan across a spread and explore a single area or compare recent societies across the globe. This remarkable resource also contains dozens of maps; scores of sidebars; hundreds of illustrations; and thousands of events, milestones, personalities, ideas, and inventions. During, vivid illustrations depict works of art, artifacts, portraits and dramatic scenes, even as sidebar topics range from local customs and lifestyles to the effect of climate change on human migration. Drawing on National Geographic’s vast resources, this concise yet comprehensive, one-of-a-kind work is as rewarding as it is compulsively readable.