The World

De: Simon Sebag Montefiore

Narrado por: 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

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

Reseñas de la Crítica

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)

Breathtaking in scope

I loved this. A massively ambitious task to write the history of the world and I loved the lens he has taken; has shaped my thinking about the world for sure. A lot of critiques are directed towards the voice artists which I think is unfair- the point is not about Oxford grammar and pronunciation, but in reflecting a story through the diverse voices that make up our history, and that history has multiple perspectives; not just a single perfectly narrated voice. Definitely worth the buy!

Wow what a book!

I plowed through the book, The word plow is in a possessive way as it is a very long listen.
I enjoying most of the book and learning so so much - About mankind, history and understanding some of the processes in the past, present and future.
Bravo and thank you to the author for this rare document, as in other of SSM’s books, he manages to tell the story in a concise and interesting manner.
I found most of the narrators amazing which made the listen much deeper. However two were not only inappropriate but also damaging with poor pronunciation which may be an indication to poor knowledge of English in one case, unfortunately she narrated almost from the beginning which meant that those chapters were lost. The second was a male who I just found to be a bad narrator with bad diction and it felt he didn’t understand the text. He only joined in towards the end so thankfully only influenced the end, American history to the end.
All in all amazing

Longest book by Montefiore

All is well except that some chapters are better to be updated, there’re certain narrators with a dry throat.
Plus the early Han chapters narrator is good but the kid can’t tell between Mandarin ZH CHI SHI vs ZI CI SI.

But the narration…

If you’re going to break up the narration duties, why not ensure that there’s a pronunciation guide to ensure some continuity? Every narrator has a different take on significant names (like Herodotus) and it’s distracting and annoying.

Also, while I appreciate the ideology behind using more authentic voices on the narration, some narrators don’t seem like professional voice artists. This is problematic.

I’m persisting because it’s a great book, but sometimes I feel like giving up.

Good book, bad narration.

The book itself is awesome but the narration makes it a struggle. Switching between multiple amateur narrators that have a completely different pronounciation of names and places was a poor choice. Some of them are plain boring to listen to. I lost it at sennacherib’s name.