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The World

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The World

By: Simon Sebag Montefiore
Narrated by: Ajjaz Awad, Ako Mitchell, Anna Cordell, Ayesha Dharker, Damian Lynch, Gunnar Cauthery, Jonathan Aris, Kevin Shen, Lara Sawalha, Leighton Pugh, Lucian Msamati, Nabiha Akkari, Nneka Okoye, Rachel Handshaw, Raj Ghatak
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About this listen

 THE TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR
ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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.©2021 Simon Sebag Montefiore Civilization Political Science Politics & Government Women World War Royalty Ancient History Middle Ages China Ottoman Empire Imperialism Marriage Winston Churchill Military Mongol Empire Africa Imperial Japan Latin American Pirate Iran Interwar Period

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Critic reviews

A history of the world from the Neanderthals to Trump. It's a rollicking tale, a kaleidoscope of savagery, sex, cruelty and chaos. By focusing on family, Montefiore provides an intimacy usually lacking in global histories. [It] has personality and a soul. It's also outrageously funny . . . an enormously entertaining book (Gerard DeGroot)
A delightful world history, told through influential families. A moreish chronicle. The device of weaving together the past using the most enduring and essential unit of human relations is inspired . . . [it] allows the author to cover every continent and era, and to give women and even children a voice and presence that they tend to be denied in more conventional histories. Despite the book's formidable length, there is never a dull moment . . . this book is a triumph and a delight, an epic that entertains, informs and appals in enjoyably equal measure
Magnificent . . . magisterial . . . [a] real-life Game of Thrones. Dip into this book anywhere and the minutiae of history leap off the page . . . Dip too into the author's copious footnotes and there are gems to be mined. Often sassy, always entertaining . . . To my mind what it gives above all is perspective from which comes understanding and not a little wisdom (Tony Rennell)
For any reader with the stomach for bloodshed and megalomaniac ambition, for anyone with a taste for Ptolemaic depravities or who would simply like to spend some quality time with China's imperial eunuchs, Montefiore's 'World' . . . will deliver it and more in spades. The author's major achievement is to make us see the world through a different lens - to make the unfamiliar familiar and, more important, the familiar unfamiliar. There is hardly a dull paragraph (David Crane)
An incredible undertaking. Montefiore finds enduring resonances and offers new perspectives . . . Because these are family stories, he adeptly eschews traditionally male histories to find greater texture and diversity. A remarkable achievement
A history of pretty much everything everywhere from the evolution of Homo sapiens to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Dip into any page and you'll find history rushing by in prose that combines clarity, liveliness and even deadpan humour with intriguing asides a speciality . . . a staggering achievement (James Walton)
Succeeds in scintillating fashion . . . an epic rich in detail . . . on each page, you'll find an interesting idea, a witty observation or a footnote containing an anecdote emblematic of a wider point. Montefiore pays attention to the lives of women and children and to places slighted by Western historians. This is an extraordinary work of wisdom and vivid storytelling (Victor Sebestyen)
All stars
Most relevant
i enjoyed the book. It is by nature sprawling and lengthy, but a hugely impressive attempt at something that's probably impossible to do well.

Like many reviews here I was disappointed by some of the narration. Much is excellent but three or four of the reader are very amateurish and quite spoilt their sections for me. Two appeared to be both reading the text for the first time and also new to english. Very disappointing, as presumably the large cast was brought together to add to the listening experience rather than detract from it.

there were also some odd decisions on when to switch from one narrator to the other - sometimes right in the middle of the action. Most odd and very distracting.

interesting book - narration very patchy

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This is such a difficult listen, in places so frustrating and irritating that I have been tempted to skip whole sections. It was laudable to select readers from across the world, given the subject matter, but the selection process, and subsequent editing, was woeful. A significant number of readers patently do not understand what they are reading. Pronounciation of common words is laughable, and 2 of the female readers sound bored to distraction, reading lines rather than sentences. When a competent reader starts the whole recording lights up, doing justice to a remarkable book, but all too soon returns to the painful dirge. A major disappointment.

so frustrating!

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Not liking all the different voices. Simon so good on tv, this is a disappointment, too much gore, incest and murder.

The world in 100 objects better than this

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The content and scope is brilliant and breathtakingly but it is spoiled by some of the numerous readers whose phrasing and pronunciation is atrocious.

Great and monumental book but some awful readers.

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I've loved listening to Sebag Montefiore in the past and was genuinely excited about this. It's not been an enjoyable listen though. I should say that a couple of the narrators were great, but their input became a welcome relief between amateur sounding narrators that completely massacred it in so many places. Some can't pronounce or even correctly enunciate simpler names and places, let alone complex ones, and one in particular seemed unable to follow quite basic sentence punctuation. It sounded at times as if it was being read for the first time by some narrators - and others, whilst I like the idea of a multilingual group of narrators, simply couldn't read written English aloud well enough. So disappointed.

Brilliant History ruined by terrible narrators

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