Customer Reviews

Asimov's Chronology of the World: The History of the World From the Big Bang to Modern Times

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If you have any interest at all in the world you live in, you should have this book. Basically chronicling the complete history of the world from its creation until 1945, it is an amazing, concise, helpful, fun quick referance.

If you are reading a historical novel and want to check how accurate it is, this book'll help you. Want to know what else was going on in the world during this war or that revolution? Just open 'er up!

I have this book handy at almost all times when I am reading. It is compartmentalized into sections concerning individual countries or groups, not just a big mishmash of everything going on all at once, and it reads very easily, not like a school history textbook. It includes a nifty "outline" timeline at the beginning, too, so you can just skim it over without reading every word.

An amazingly hefty, helpful, well researched book that no one should be without.

Asimov's Chronology of the World is a superb reference work. Although not really (and not meant to be) a coherent narrative, it is highly readable and absolutely essential to any historical research. It is useful as a reference tool in almost any historical context; if you're not sure when something happened, or exactly what happened, consult the Chronology. If it was a major happening, it's almost certain to be there, and realtively easy to find.

Asimov does sacrifice depth for breadth in this work; many more minor events are not covered. Also, if you plan to read this work cover to cover (I did, and it was very well worth the effort--doing so gives a broad perspective on history very difficult to find elsewhere), you need a good historical atlas on hand to understand how events unfold.

The only complaint I have with this work is that Asimov did not live long enough to write the sequel, chronologizing the events from 1945-2000. If anyone has found a good book to fill this gap, please let me know!

In sum, Asimov's Chronology is the essential one-volume reference to world history. No home library should be without it.

This is probably Isaac Asimov's best non-fiction history book. It tells the story of history from a simple prespective of what happened when. Lots of modern historians have gotten away from that simple approach. It helps that Asimov is not a historian in the traditional academic way. He was just a person who knew a lot about many things, one of them being history.

Coupled with his work about Science and Discovery, it makes for a good reference work that is also a good read.

Isaac Asimov was a man of amazing intelligence, curiosity, humor, and encyclopedic knowledge. He wrote over 465 books (easily the world record), including the popular sci-fi Foundation series, but the "Chronology of the World" is perhaps his greatest monument.

Spanning the entire duration of the universe (until September 2, 1945), this astonishing history sweeps across the whole of human existence, covering vast amounts of material from the spheres of politics, military history, science, mathematics, art, music, literature, even athletics. If it has defined humanity, Asimov, a one-man publishing house, throws it in, somewhere in this massive volume.

This book is not another pedantic purgation of history--it's very exciting to read. As a professor of biochemistry and author of thousands of scholarly essays, Asmiov certainly has the intelligence to write this book. But as a writer of popular science-fiction stories, he also knows what it takes to make the book fun and compelling to read. This rare combination of brain wits and communicative wits make Asimov a great guide through history. His accounts of the outstanding people and wars are gripping--especially his treatment of Genghis Khan and the Mongol raiders, the rise and fall of Greece and the rise and fall of Rome, and the climactic battles of World War II.

While I am astounded by the breadth and the depth and the insight and the sheer achievement of this book, I cannot pretend that it's perfect. Asimov chose to structure it purely chronologically, country by country, from start to finish. The result is one massive block of near-continuous text, making it difficult to grasp the big picture, and difficult to review the major events. There is a timeline at the beginning and an index at the end, to try to compensate for this flaw. Also, there is nary a map to be found in the entire book. This was a disappointment and I often found myself referring to a world map to see what in the world Asimov was talking about.

Even with the flaws, this is an amazing achievement and a fantastic read. In few other books does humanity, at its worst and best, unfold so brilliantly as in this one.

Asimov is an acknowledged genius. This book is a great example of the man's genius.

A general problem with history books is seeing how the little bit you are looking at fits in with the big picture. Asimov doesn't over-analyse - he gives his history in bite sized chunks so the thread of the overall historical flow remains undisrupted.

Asimov has the good sense to draw the book to a close while it is still history 50 years before his writing date. The little mention of his birth is just one of the many points that raises a smile.

I would have liked more on Australia, but I guess like many parts of the world the stuff Australia did up to the middle of the 20th Century did not have major international impacts.

Start reading your history here and then specific areas afterwards.

This is a fantastic book. It is a clear roadmap of history for those of us that are puzzled by history, confused by the chronology of events, and mystified by the complexity of what happened in the world and how it happened.

Isaac Asimov is probably my favorite writer of non-fiction, and this might just be his best work. Although it covers almost every important event from the Big Bang to the end of World War II, it somehow manages to be far from dry or boring. In fact, much of it reads like a novel - so much so that the book is hard to put down.

Some have complained that Asimov's chronology emphasizes Western events, that it is mainly concerned with military and political history, or that it has no maps. The last of these is the only justified criticism, in my opinion (I found myself referring to an atlas of world history many times while reading this book). Asimov does mention other parts of the world, though not in as much detail. But that can be justified in two ways. First, this is a book for English speakers, and they are more likely to be interested in those events that are connected to their part of the world. Second, the history of the West has in fact had a greater influence on the world as a whole - at least so far - so it is reasonable to spend more time on it.

Essentially the same thing can be said regarding the emphasis on military and political history. As a matter of fact, though, this book probably contains more on such things as the history of science and of literature than most comparable volumes.

Most history books I've read have been boring and a chore to read. This one I can hardly put down; I keep staying up way too late reading it; I look something up, and then look back to see what happened beforehand or what happened afterward, or I check to see what Japan was up to during WWI, etc. This book could easily have been a dry listing of names and dates, like most textbooks (especially given the enormous scope of the book), but Asimov does a wonderful job of helping the reader to identify the significant events and why they are significant, and to follow trends and threads in history by linking effects to their causes. His editorial commentary is fun too;like when he calls Italy's performance in WWII "comic relief". I learned more from this book than from some of the history classes I've taken.

This book is a masterpiece of reference books. Asimov has compiled a giantic timeline of human civilization. Each time period has been subdivied into individual countries, empires, and regions(when there wasn't a country to speak of). Within each country section, he gives the most important information first, ending with scientific and artistic achievements. The book ends in 1945 with him siting the segnificance of that year and the fact that he would never be able to catch up with current history. The one weakness is that the majority of history given is Western, but that is understandable considering the lack of written reccord in the Pacific and Sub-Saharan Afican regions.

This extraordinary book gave me a perspective of all important events in humankind histtory. I was looking for many years for such a book and when I finally found it I was extremely pleased, and I still am