The World: A Family History

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Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil. We don't appear again until the late 20th century when non-contextualised "Irish" terrorists threaten the UK, a country he never explains the origins of, though to be fair, there were other things going on in 1800-01. Even though he explains the origins of two of the last three US Presidents in some detail but neglects to say how Joe Biden's ancestors ended up in the US. He does say something about the Kennedys though not where they came from originally. SSM’s evident enjoyment of salacious details – of who chopped the largest number of enemy penises off, or who laid the largest number of concubines or other people’s wives (or husbands) – occasionally obscures other interesting aspects. I enjoyed all the sex and depravity for sure, but I’d have welcomed a bit more on the more boring things they did too. For example, after quite a detailed account of bedroom cavortings in Empress Wei’s court around 85 B.C., a throwaway phrase mentions that these oversexed charmers had also doubled the scale of China’s cultural artefacts and activity. It’s true the book is called a “Family History” and not a “cultural history”, but the mountain of genitalia surely gives a slightly incomplete picture of the ancient world. 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

Finally, one technical angle which is a serious shortcoming and which the publisher needs to remedy: SSM inserts a large number of additional footnotes/endnotes, asterisked and assembled at the end of each chapter in my electronic version. Many are quite fascinating and well worth reading – but it is frequently difficult to work out which comment at the end relates to which asterisk in the body of the text, as his additional remarks often illustrate a point by going off at a slight tangent. That is a pity, as it disrupts the flow of his narrative quite significantly to hunt through and work out which bit applies to whom. In a book where it is already quite difficult to work out which country/person he is talking about, It would have been more of a romp if the footnotes/endnotes had been numbered instead of asterisked: you would know immediately where you were. In a fifty-year reign (it ended in 1870), Moshoeshoe defeated the British, Afrikaners, Zulus and Ndebele. More humane and constructive than Shaka, he was ‘majestic and benevolent. His aquiline profile, the fullness and regularity of his features, his eyes a little weary made a deep impression upon me,’ wrote Casalis. ‘I felt at once I was dealing with a superior man, trained to think, to command others and, above all, himself.’ Out of these wars emerged the present shape of southern Africa. The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. 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 real problem of humanity,’ said Edward O Wilson, ‘is we have Palaeolithic emotions, mediaeval institutions and Godlike technology.’ Just because we are the smartest ape ever created, just because we have solved many problems so far, it does not mean we will solve everything. Human history is like one of those investment warning clauses: is no guarantee of future results.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. Seriously good fun... the Soviet march on Berlin, nightmarish drinking games at Stalin's countryhouse, the magnificence of the Bolshoi, interrogations, snow, sex and exile... lust adultery and romance. Eminently readable and strangely affecting." Sunday Telegraph There are 4 sub-themes, at least 4 that I identified: History of Slavery, History of the Jewish people, Art/Music History, and Factoids. I learned much about these topics and enjoyed the footnotes throughout. I thank the author for writing this book. I cannot imaged the time and painstaking effort it took to write. It is a gift to all that read it.

The cookie is set by Krux Digital under the domain krxd.net. The cookie stores a unique ID to identify a returning user for the purpose of targeted advertising.Records the default button state of the corresponding category & the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie. Does India have bowlers who can finish games with the bat and where does Steve Smith fit for Australia? A staggering achievement. Simon Sebag Montefiore has given us a tremendous gift: a pulsingly readable world history through the millennia and from one end of the globe to the other.” —Sir Simon Schama, author of The Story of the Jews 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 The cookie is set by CloudFlare service to store a unique ID to identify a returning users device which then is used for targeted advertising.