Simon Sebag Montefiore

From the master storyteller and internationally bestselling author - the story of humanity from prehistory to the present day, told through the one thing all humans have in common: family. We begin with the footsteps of a family walking along a beach 950,000 years ago. From here, Montefiore takes us on an exhilarating epic journey through the families that have shaped our world: the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Krupps, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis and Kenyattas, Saudis, Kims and Assads. A rich cast of complex characters form the beating heart of the story. Some are well-known leaders, from Alexander the Great, Attila, Ivan the Terrible and Genghis Khan to Hitler, Thatcher, Obama, Putin and Zelensky. Some are creative, from Socrates, Michelangelo and Shakespeare to Newton, Mozart, Balzac, Freud, Bowie and Tim Berners-Lee. Others are lesser-known: Hongwu, who began life as a beggar and founded the Ming dynasty; Kamehameha, conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, Arab empress who defied Rome; King Henry of Haiti; Lady Murasaki, first female novelist; Sayyida al-Hurra, Moroccan pirate-queen. Here are not just conquerors and queens but prophets, charlatans, actors, gangsters, artists, scientists, doctors, tycoons, lovers, wives, husbands and children. This is world history on the most grand and intimate scale - spanning centuries, continents and cultures, and linking grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion, medicine and technology to the people at the centre of the human drama. As spellbinding as fiction, The World captures the story of humankind in all its joy, sorrow, romance, ingenuity and cruelty in a ground-breaking, single narrative that will forever shift the boundaries of what history can achieve.

The World

Matheus Lavinscky 

Empire is always a charade of power, a confidence trick, pulled off with the mystique of hegemony that can only be sustained by the threat of swift force. But the European powers - Portuguese, Dutch, British - were small nations that particularly needed the empire bluff to control far-flung colonies and vast populations. Yet empire was expensive. Armies and infrastructure soon ate the profits, and it was hard to avoid the imperial vortex: each new conquest required more war to hold what you had and then further annexations to deny prizes to your rivals.

Self-determination was a noble ideal, still accepted today as the correct basis for the organization of the modern world - with nation states as the ideal good structures, empire as obsolete and bad. But at its heart was a paradox: the creation of nations was painful and cruel. The new nation states had to be hacked out of territories long ruled by multi-ethnic empires. The comfort of belonging to a nation has a cost: the exclusion of those who do not. While empires often protected minorities, nation states did the opposite: the creation of new nations usually involved partitions and expulsions. 

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