People often complain that in history lessons at school they were taught just a few topics - the Romans, the Tudors, the Nazis - and how they have no idea at all about what happened in between. To remedy this, World History: 50 Key Milestones You Really Need to Know offers brief and stimulating outlines of key developments in the history of the world, from the beginning of agriculture 10,000 years ago to the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11.
Ian Crofton, the author of several books of popular history including The Kings and Queens of England, Traitors and Turncoats and History Without the Boring Bits, brings his lively style to bear in a series of essays ranging from ancient Egypt to modern China, from the Vikings and the Mongols to the French Revolution and the Cold War.
Each essay is accompanied by a detailed time line of dates and events, and the flavour of the period concerned is brought to life by selected contemporary quotations from figures as diverse as Aristotle, Ashoka, Saladin, Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther, Suleiman the Magnificent, Galileo, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, Mary Wollstonecraft, Napoleon, Lincoln, Lenin and Winston Churchill. In addition, box features throw light on a range of related topics, from the Nazca Lines to Renaissance man, from Confucianism and the state to Alexander the Great's horse, from Islamic science and the Barbary corsairs to the Enigma code and the atomic bomb.
Chapter 1. The beginnings of agriculture
Chapter 3. Egypt of the pharaohs
Chapter 5. Alexander the Great
Chapter 6. The spread of Roman power
Chapter 7. The fall of Rome and its aftermath
Chapter 15. Japan, the island empire
Chapter 17. Empires and kingdoms of Africa
Chapter 19. The Ottoman empire
Chapter 20. The voyages of discovery
Chapter 22. The Counter–Reformation
Chapter 23. The English Revolution
Chapter 24. The Scientific Revolution
Chapter 27. The American Revolution
Chapter 28. The French Revolution
Chapter 29. The Napoleonic era
Chapter 30. The Industrial Revolution
Chapter 31. Nationalism in Europe
Chapter 33. The expansion of the USA
Chapter 34. The American Civil War
Chapter 35. The rise of socialism
Chapter 37. The First World War
Chapter 39. The shadow of Fascism
Chapter 40. The Great Depression
Chapter 41. The Second World War: Europe
Chapter 42. The Second World War: Asia and the Pacific
Chapter 47. The Arab–Israeli conflict
Chapter 48. The fall of communism
Chapter 49. The resurgence of China