Historical Study & Educational Resources
![Simon Sebag Montefiore - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001HCZFKA.jpg)
The World: A Family History of Humanity
A magisterial world history unlike any other that tells the story of humanity through the one thing we all have in common: families • From the New York Times best-selling author of The Romanovs
"Succession meets Game of Thrones." -The Spectator • "The author brings his cast of dynastic titans, rogues and psychopaths to life...An epic that both entertains and informs." -The Economist, Best Books of the Year
Around 950,000 years ago, a family of five walked along the beach and left behind the oldest family footprints ever discovered. For award-winning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, these poignant, familiar fossils serve as an inspiration for a new kind of world history, one that is genuinely global, spans all eras and all continents, and focuses on the family ties that connect every one of us.
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. It features a cast of extraordinary diversity: in addition to rulers and conquerors, there are priests, charlatans, artists, scientists, tycoons, gangsters, lovers, husbands, wives, and children. There is Hongwu, the beggar who founded the Ming dynasty; Ewuare, the Leopard-King of Benin; Henry Christophe, King of Haiti; Kamehameha, the conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, the Arab empress who defied Rome; Lady Murasaki, the first female novelist; Sayyida al-Hurra, the Moroccan pirate-queen. Here too are moderns such as Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Volodymyr Zelensky. Here are 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. These powerful families represent the breadth of human endeavor, with bloody succession battles, treacherous conspiracies, and shocking megalomania alongside flourishing culture, moving romances, and enlightened benevolence. A dazzling achievement as spellbinding as fiction, The World captures the whole human story in a single, masterful narrative.
"Succession meets Game of Thrones." -The Spectator • "The author brings his cast of dynastic titans, rogues and psychopaths to life...An epic that both entertains and informs." -The Economist, Best Books of the Year
Around 950,000 years ago, a family of five walked along the beach and left behind the oldest family footprints ever discovered. For award-winning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, these poignant, familiar fossils serve as an inspiration for a new kind of world history, one that is genuinely global, spans all eras and all continents, and focuses on the family ties that connect every one of us.
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. It features a cast of extraordinary diversity: in addition to rulers and conquerors, there are priests, charlatans, artists, scientists, tycoons, gangsters, lovers, husbands, wives, and children. There is Hongwu, the beggar who founded the Ming dynasty; Ewuare, the Leopard-King of Benin; Henry Christophe, King of Haiti; Kamehameha, the conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, the Arab empress who defied Rome; Lady Murasaki, the first female novelist; Sayyida al-Hurra, the Moroccan pirate-queen. Here too are moderns such as Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Volodymyr Zelensky. Here are 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. These powerful families represent the breadth of human endeavor, with bloody succession battles, treacherous conspiracies, and shocking megalomania alongside flourishing culture, moving romances, and enlightened benevolence. A dazzling achievement as spellbinding as fiction, The World captures the whole human story in a single, masterful narrative.
Editorial Reviews
Named The Times (UK) History Book of the Year!
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Economist
"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
"A tour de force. Hugely ambitious, erudite and filled with surprises. This puts the family and families back into the heart of history." -Peter Frankopan, New York Times best-selling author of Silk Roads
"Compelling, moving, epic, and diverse, Montefiore's wonderful storytelling prowess and wide research pulls off this unparalleled world history in a single narrative with unforgettable style. All the drama of humankind is here from cavemen to Putin and Zelensky." -Olivette Otele, author of African Europeans
"One word for Montefiore's book: magisterial." -Ben Okri, Booker Prize–winning author of The Famished Road
"In this work of astonishing scope and erudition, Simon Sebag Montefiore interweaves the stories of the servants, courtiers, and kings, pioneers, preachers, and philosophers who have made history. A brilliant synthesis that will impart fresh insight to even the most learned readers." -Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State
"Simon Sebag Montefiore took on the ambitious task of telling the story of mankind throughout time which he accomplished in splendid fashion! The World: A Family History of Humanity is a brilliant book, and its examination of our species' experiences through the prism of the family is truly inspired." -General David Petraeus (US Army, Ret.), former Commander of the Surge in Iraq, US Central Command, and NATO/US Forces in Afghanistan; former Director of the CIA.
"There is a certain satisfaction in holding, and reading a bulky tome. Simon Sebag Montefiore's The W...
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Economist
"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
"A tour de force. Hugely ambitious, erudite and filled with surprises. This puts the family and families back into the heart of history." -Peter Frankopan, New York Times best-selling author of Silk Roads
"Compelling, moving, epic, and diverse, Montefiore's wonderful storytelling prowess and wide research pulls off this unparalleled world history in a single narrative with unforgettable style. All the drama of humankind is here from cavemen to Putin and Zelensky." -Olivette Otele, author of African Europeans
"One word for Montefiore's book: magisterial." -Ben Okri, Booker Prize–winning author of The Famished Road
"In this work of astonishing scope and erudition, Simon Sebag Montefiore interweaves the stories of the servants, courtiers, and kings, pioneers, preachers, and philosophers who have made history. A brilliant synthesis that will impart fresh insight to even the most learned readers." -Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State
"Simon Sebag Montefiore took on the ambitious task of telling the story of mankind throughout time which he accomplished in splendid fashion! The World: A Family History of Humanity is a brilliant book, and its examination of our species' experiences through the prism of the family is truly inspired." -General David Petraeus (US Army, Ret.), former Commander of the Surge in Iraq, US Central Command, and NATO/US Forces in Afghanistan; former Director of the CIA.
"There is a certain satisfaction in holding, and reading a bulky tome. Simon Sebag Montefiore's The W...
Readers Top Reviews
Sally ShielsM. Schne
The human race is not very nice at all. Simon has written a massive book on the history of the world, its a sort of horrible histories for adults. We are a nasty, horrid, murdering, blood thirsty race only interested in land acquisition and power and rape of the lands and people for financial gain and nothing will stand in our way. Nepotism, Machiavellian, despots, dictators, kings and queens, servants and slaves and revolutionaries . And as for the women, blimey ! Its all there and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and learnt so much, history lessons at school were never this interesting or fun if you can call it fun. (there is wry humour in it) The sort of book to read while cringing and saying urgh quite a lot and it's sad to say the human race still has much to learn from the past. Thank you Simon its a wonderful book well researched and as always you write so well, I'll be buying more copies to give as gifts but I'm glad to say my copy was on kindle which I think was much more manageable. So what next Simon? how do you top that?
Charles Hillcrest
There has never been a world history anything like this one. Partly because it's a truly global history that is as interested in places like Hawaii, Haiti and East Africa as Europe and America and partly because it is a history made up of individuals and families and their stories, rather than states, movements, trends or statistics. But what really makes it different is that it gives you world history with all the juice left in, unfiltered by scholarly primness. It brings to vivid, bloody, sexy, eccentric life hundreds of great historical figures from around the world by focusing on their human qualities: their passions and obsessions, their physical beauty or ugliness, their loves, hatreds, desires and addictions. While it's a very long book, it doesn't actually feel like that when you're reading it because it's organised in tight, fast-moving short chapters, because your attention is taken all around the world and because the familiar characters - the Atillas, Caesars, Cromwells, Bismarcks, Michaelangelos and Roosevelts, are mixed up with less familiar, equally fascinating figures from China, Africa and the Arab world. It's a history buff's delight.
GazzaGazza
An excellent book. I’ve only just received The World by Simon Sebag Montefiore and have been enjoying it since. It is a huge book at over 1000 pages and differs from other world histories in its approach by focusing upon families to tell the story of The World. The author writes in the Introduction: ‘Unlike many of the histories that I grew up with, this is a genuine world history, not unbalanced by excessive focus on Britain and Europe but rather giving Asia, Africa and the Americas the attention they deserve. The focus on family also makes it possible to pay more attention to the lives of women and children, both of whom were slighted in the books I read as a schoolboy.’ The writing, as one has come to expect from Simon Sebag Montefiore, is superb; beautifully constructed and a pleasure to read. I’m only a couple of chapters in, so far, but have skimmed through the whole of the book and I am very pleased with my purchase. Highly recommended. I hope you find my review helpful.
Mohit G
This is a big which is very ambitious in scope and, for the most part, achieves what it tries to set out to do. This a story told with empathy. Have been a big fan of the past works from Simon Sebag Montefiore and this latest one is a keeper.
RB Jurgens
Magnificent narrative, overview, Personality counts in history. It takes a huge book to make this common sense case. And ironically, this insight is one which many dictators and intellectuals have been most concerned to deny, to the cost of those who believe them.
Short Excerpt Teaser
INTRODUCTION
As the tide fell, the footsteps emerge. The footsteps of a family walking on the beach of what is now a small village in eastern England, Happisburgh. Five sets of footprints. Probably a male and four children, dating from between 950,000 and 850,000 years before the present. These, discovered in 2013, are the oldest family footprints ever found. They are not the first: even older footprints have been found in Africa, where the human story started. But these are the oldest traces of a family. And they are the inspiration for this history of the world.
There have been many histories of the world, but this one adopts a new approach, using the stories of families across time to provide a different, fresh perspective. It is one that appeals to me because it offers a way of connecting great events with individual human drama, from the first hominins to today, from the sharpened stone to the iPhone and the drone. World history is an elixir for troubled times: its advantage is that it offers a sense of perspective; its drawback is that it involves too much distance. World history often has themes, not people; biography has people, not themes.
The family remains the essential unit of human existence-even in the age of AI and galactical warfare. I have woven history together telling the stories of multiple families in every continent and epoch, using them to tether the onward rush of the human story. It is a biography of many people instead of one person. Even if the span of these families is global, their dramas are intimate-birth, death, marriage, love, hate; they rise; they fall; rise again; they migrate; they return. In every family drama, there are many acts. That is what Samuel Johnson meant when he said every kingdom is a family and every family a little kingdom.
Unlike many of the histories that I grew up with, this is a genuine world history, not unbalanced by excessive focus on Britain and Europe but rather giving Asia, Africa and the Americas the attention they deserve. The focus on family also makes it possible to pay more attention to the lives of women and children, both of whom were slighted in the books I read as a schoolboy. Their roles- like the shape of family itself-change through the arc of time. My aim is to show how the fontanelles of history grew together.
The word family has an air of cosiness and affection, but of course in real life families can be webs of struggle and cruelty too. Many of the families that I follow are power families in which the intimacy and warmth of nurture and love are at once infused and distorted by the peculiar and implacable dynamics of politics. In power families, danger comes from intimacy. ‘Calamity,' as Han Fei Tzu warned his monarch in second-century bc China, ‘will come to you from those you love.'
‘History is something very few people were doing,' writes Yuval Noah Harari, ‘when everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets.' Many of the families I choose are ones that exercise power, but others encompass enslaved persons, doctors, painters, novelists, executioners, generals, historians, priests, charlatans, scientists, tycoons, criminals-and lovers. Even a few gods.
Some will be familiar, many will not: here we follow the dynasties of Mali, Ming, Medici and Mutapa, Dahomey, Oman, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Brazil and Iran, Haiti, Hawaii and Habsburg; we chronicle Genghis Khan, Sundiata Keita, Empress Wu, Ewuare the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Kim Jong-un, Itzcoatl, Andrew Jackson, King Henry of Haiti, Ganga Zumba, Kaiser Wilhelm, Indira Gandhi, Sobhuza, Pachacuti Inca and Hitler alongside Kenyattas, Castros, Assads and Trumps, Cleopatra, de Gaulle, Khomeini, Gorbachev, Marie Antoinette, Jefferson, Nader, Mao, Obama; Mozart, Balzac and Michelangelo; Caesars, Mughals, Saudis, Roosevelts, Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Ottomans.
The lurid coexists with the cosy. There are many loving fathers and mothers but also ‘Fatso' Ptolemy IV dismembers his son and sends the parts to the child's mother; Nader Shah and Empress Iris blind their sons; Queen Isabella tortures her daughter; Charlemagne possibly sleeps with his; Ottoman power mother Kösem orders the strangling of her son and in turn is strangled on the orders of her grandson; Valois potentate Catherine de' Medici orchestrates a massacre at the wedding of her daughter whose rape by her sons she seems to have condoned; Nero sleeps with his mother, then murders her. Shaka kills his mother, then uses it as a pretext to launch a massacre. Saddam Hussein unleashes his sons against his sons-in-law. The killing of brothers is endemic-even now: Kim Jong-un has recently murdered his brother in a very modern way using a reality-show stunt as cover, a nerve agent as poison.
We foll...
As the tide fell, the footsteps emerge. The footsteps of a family walking on the beach of what is now a small village in eastern England, Happisburgh. Five sets of footprints. Probably a male and four children, dating from between 950,000 and 850,000 years before the present. These, discovered in 2013, are the oldest family footprints ever found. They are not the first: even older footprints have been found in Africa, where the human story started. But these are the oldest traces of a family. And they are the inspiration for this history of the world.
There have been many histories of the world, but this one adopts a new approach, using the stories of families across time to provide a different, fresh perspective. It is one that appeals to me because it offers a way of connecting great events with individual human drama, from the first hominins to today, from the sharpened stone to the iPhone and the drone. World history is an elixir for troubled times: its advantage is that it offers a sense of perspective; its drawback is that it involves too much distance. World history often has themes, not people; biography has people, not themes.
The family remains the essential unit of human existence-even in the age of AI and galactical warfare. I have woven history together telling the stories of multiple families in every continent and epoch, using them to tether the onward rush of the human story. It is a biography of many people instead of one person. Even if the span of these families is global, their dramas are intimate-birth, death, marriage, love, hate; they rise; they fall; rise again; they migrate; they return. In every family drama, there are many acts. That is what Samuel Johnson meant when he said every kingdom is a family and every family a little kingdom.
Unlike many of the histories that I grew up with, this is a genuine world history, not unbalanced by excessive focus on Britain and Europe but rather giving Asia, Africa and the Americas the attention they deserve. The focus on family also makes it possible to pay more attention to the lives of women and children, both of whom were slighted in the books I read as a schoolboy. Their roles- like the shape of family itself-change through the arc of time. My aim is to show how the fontanelles of history grew together.
The word family has an air of cosiness and affection, but of course in real life families can be webs of struggle and cruelty too. Many of the families that I follow are power families in which the intimacy and warmth of nurture and love are at once infused and distorted by the peculiar and implacable dynamics of politics. In power families, danger comes from intimacy. ‘Calamity,' as Han Fei Tzu warned his monarch in second-century bc China, ‘will come to you from those you love.'
‘History is something very few people were doing,' writes Yuval Noah Harari, ‘when everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets.' Many of the families I choose are ones that exercise power, but others encompass enslaved persons, doctors, painters, novelists, executioners, generals, historians, priests, charlatans, scientists, tycoons, criminals-and lovers. Even a few gods.
Some will be familiar, many will not: here we follow the dynasties of Mali, Ming, Medici and Mutapa, Dahomey, Oman, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Brazil and Iran, Haiti, Hawaii and Habsburg; we chronicle Genghis Khan, Sundiata Keita, Empress Wu, Ewuare the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Kim Jong-un, Itzcoatl, Andrew Jackson, King Henry of Haiti, Ganga Zumba, Kaiser Wilhelm, Indira Gandhi, Sobhuza, Pachacuti Inca and Hitler alongside Kenyattas, Castros, Assads and Trumps, Cleopatra, de Gaulle, Khomeini, Gorbachev, Marie Antoinette, Jefferson, Nader, Mao, Obama; Mozart, Balzac and Michelangelo; Caesars, Mughals, Saudis, Roosevelts, Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Ottomans.
The lurid coexists with the cosy. There are many loving fathers and mothers but also ‘Fatso' Ptolemy IV dismembers his son and sends the parts to the child's mother; Nader Shah and Empress Iris blind their sons; Queen Isabella tortures her daughter; Charlemagne possibly sleeps with his; Ottoman power mother Kösem orders the strangling of her son and in turn is strangled on the orders of her grandson; Valois potentate Catherine de' Medici orchestrates a massacre at the wedding of her daughter whose rape by her sons she seems to have condoned; Nero sleeps with his mother, then murders her. Shaka kills his mother, then uses it as a pretext to launch a massacre. Saddam Hussein unleashes his sons against his sons-in-law. The killing of brothers is endemic-even now: Kim Jong-un has recently murdered his brother in a very modern way using a reality-show stunt as cover, a nerve agent as poison.
We foll...
