A little history of the world

A little history of the world

E. H. Gombrich, 1909-2001

Book - 2005

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Subjects
World history.
Civilization > History.
Published
New Haven : Yale University Press [2005]
Language
English
German
Main Author
E. H. Gombrich, 1909-2001 (-)
Item Description
"Originally published as Weltgeschichte von der Urzeit bis zur Gegenwart by Steyrermuhl-Verlag, Vienna in 1936"--Title page verso.
Published in German as Eine kurze Weltgeschichte fur junge Leser.
Physical Description
xix, 284 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm
ISBN
9780300108835
  • Preface
  • 1. Once Upon a Time
  • The past and memory
  • Before there were any people
  • Dragon-like creatures
  • Earth without life
  • Sun without earth
  • What is history?
  • 2. The Greatest Inventors of All Time
  • The Heidelberg jaw
  • Neanderthal man
  • Prehistory
  • Fire
  • Tools
  • Cavemen
  • Language
  • Painting
  • Making magic
  • The Ice Age and the Early Stone Age
  • Pile dwellings
  • The Bronze Age
  • People like you and me
  • 3. The Land by the Nile
  • King Menes
  • Egypt
  • A hymn to the Nile
  • Pharaohs
  • Pyramids
  • The religion of the ancient Egyptians
  • The Sphinx
  • Hieroglyphs
  • Papyrus
  • Revolution in the old kingdom
  • Akhenaton's reforms
  • 4. Sunday, Monday
  • Mesopotamia today
  • The burial sites at Ur
  • Clay tablets and cuneiform script
  • Hamurabi's laws
  • Star worship
  • The origin of the days of the week
  • The Tower of Babel
  • Nebuchadnezzar
  • 5. The One and Only God
  • Palestine
  • Abraham of Ur
  • The Flood
  • Moses' bondage in Egypt and the year of the departure from Egypt
  • Saul, David, Solomon
  • The division of the kingdom
  • The destruction of Israel
  • The prophets speak
  • The Babylonian Captivity
  • The Return
  • The Old Testament and faith in the Messiah
  • 6. I C-A-N R-E-A-D
  • Writing with the alphabet
  • The Phoenicians and their trading posts
  • 7. Heroes and their Weapons
  • The songs of Homer
  • Schliemann's excavations
  • Sea-raider kings
  • Crete and the labyrinth
  • The Dorian migration
  • The songs of the heroes
  • Greek tribes and their colonies
  • 8. An Unequal Struggle
  • The Persians and their faith
  • Cyrus conquers Babylon
  • Cambyses in Egypt
  • Darius's empire
  • The Ionian revolt
  • The first Punitive Expedition
  • The second Punitive Expedition and the Battle of Marathon
  • Xerxes' campaign
  • Thermopylae
  • The Battle of Salamis
  • 9. Two Small Cities in One Small Land
  • The Olympic Games
  • The Delphic Oracle
  • Sparta and Spartan education
  • Athens
  • Draco and Solon
  • The People's Assembly and tyrants
  • The time of Pericles
  • Philosophy
  • Sculpture and painting
  • Architecture
  • Theatre
  • 10. The Enlightened One and his Land
  • India
  • Mohenjo-Daro, a city from the time of Ur
  • The Indian migrations
  • Indo-European languages
  • Castes
  • Brahma and the transmigration of souls
  • 'This is you'
  • Prince Gautama
  • The Enlightenment
  • Release from sufffering
  • Nirvana
  • The followers of the Buddha
  • 11. A Great Teacher of a Great People
  • China in the time before Christ
  • The emperor of China and the princes
  • The meaning of Chinese writing
  • Confucius
  • The importance of practices and customs
  • The family
  • Ruler and subject
  • Lao-tzu
  • The Tao
  • 12. The Greatest Adventure of All
  • The Peloponnesian War
  • The Delphic War
  • Philip of Macedon
  • The Battle of Chaeronea
  • The decline of the Persian empire
  • Alexander the Great
  • The destruction of Thebes
  • Aristotle and his knowledge
  • Diogenes
  • The conquest of Asia Minor
  • The Gordion Knot
  • The Battle of Issus
  • The conquest of Tyre and the conquest of Egypt
  • Alexandria
  • The Battle of Gaugamela
  • The Indian expedition
  • Porus
  • Alexander, ruler of the Orient
  • Alexander's death and his successors
  • Hellenism
  • The library of Alexandria
  • 13. New Wars and New Warriors
  • Italy
  • Rome and the myth of Rome's foundation
  • Class warfare
  • The twelve tablets of the law
  • The Roman character
  • Rome's capture by the Gauls
  • The conquest of Italy
  • Pyrrhus
  • Carthage
  • The First Punic War
  • Hannibal
  • Crossing the Alps
  • Quintus Fabius Maximus
  • Cannae
  • The last call to arms
  • Scipio's victory over Hannibal
  • The conquest of Greece
  • Cato
  • The destruction of Carthage
  • 14. An Enemy of History
  • The Emperor Shih Huang-ti of Ch'in
  • The burning of the books
  • The princes of Ch'in and the naming of China
  • The Great Wall of China
  • The Han ruling family
  • Learned officials
  • 15. Rulers of the Western World
  • Roman provinces
  • Roads and aqueducts
  • Legions
  • The two Gracchi
  • Bread and circuses
  • Marius
  • The Cimbri and the Teutones
  • Sulla
  • Gladiators
  • Julius Caesar
  • The Gallic Wars
  • Victory in the civil war
  • Cleopatra
  • The reform of the calendar
  • Caesar's murder
  • Augustus and the empire
  • The arts
  • 16. The Good News
  • Jesus Christ
  • The teachings of the Apostle Paul
  • The Cross
  • Paul preaching to the Corinthians
  • The cult of the emperor
  • Nero
  • Rome burns
  • The first Christian persecutions
  • The catacombs
  • Titus destroys Jerusalem
  • The dispersal of the Jews
  • 17. Life in the Empire and at its Frontiers
  • Tenements and villas
  • Therms
  • The Colosseum
  • The Germans
  • Arminius and the battle in Teutoburg forest
  • The Limes
  • Soldiers and their gods
  • Trajan's expeditions in Dacia
  • Marcus Aurelius's battles near Vienna
  • Warrior-emperors
  • The decline of Italy
  • The spread of Christianity
  • Diocletian's reforms
  • The last Christian persecution
  • Constantine
  • The founding of Constantinople
  • The division of the empire
  • Christianity becomes the religion of the state
  • 18. The Storm
  • The Huns
  • The Visigoths
  • The Migrations
  • Attila
  • Leo the Great
  • Romulus Augustulus
  • Odoacer and the end of antiquity
  • The Ostrogoths and Theodoric
  • Ravenna
  • Justinian
  • The Pandects of Justinian and the Agia Sophia
  • The end of the Goths
  • The Lombards
  • 19. The Starry Night Begins
  • 'The Dark Ages'?
  • Belief and superstition
  • Stylites
  • Benedictines
  • Preserving the inheritance of antiquity
  • The importance of the northern monasteries
  • Clovis's baptism
  • The role of the clergy in the Merovingian kingdom
  • Boniface
  • 20. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Prophet
  • The Arabian desert
  • Mecca and the Kaaba
  • Muhammad's background and life
  • Persecution and flight
  • Medina
  • The battle with Mecca
  • The last sermon
  • The conquests of Palestine, Persia and Egypt
  • The burning of the Alexandrian library
  • The siege of Constantinople
  • The conquests of North Africa and Spain
  • The battles of Tours and Poitiers
  • Arab culture
  • Arabic numerals
  • 21. A Conqueror who Knows How to Rule
  • The Merovingians and their stewards
  • The Kingdom of the Franks
  • Charlemagne's battles in Gaul, Italy and Spain
  • The Avars
  • Battles with the Saxons
  • The Heldenlieder
  • The crowning of the emperor
  • Harun al-Rashid's ambassadors
  • The division and decline of the Carolingian empire
  • Svatopluk
  • The Vikings
  • The kingdoms of the Normans
  • 22. A Struggle to Become Lord of Christendom
  • East and West in Carolingian times
  • The blossoming of culture in China
  • The Magyar invasion
  • King Henry
  • Otto the Great
  • Austria and the Babenbergs
  • Feudalism and serfdom
  • Hugh Capet
  • The Danes in England
  • Religious appointments
  • The Investiture Controversy
  • Gregory VII and Henry IV
  • Canossa
  • Robert Guiscard and William the Conqueror
  • 23. Chivalrous Knights
  • Horsemen and knights
  • Castles
  • Bondsmen
  • From noble youth to knight: page, squire, dubbing
  • A knight's duties
  • Minstrelsy
  • Tournaments
  • Chivalrous poetry
  • The Song of the Nibelungen
  • The First Crusade
  • Godfrey of Bouillon and the conquest of Jerusalem
  • The significance of the crusades
  • 24. Emperors in the Age of Chivalry
  • Frederick Barbarossa
  • Barter and the money-based economy
  • Italian towns
  • The empire
  • The resistance and defeat of Milan
  • The dubbing feast at Mainz
  • The Third Crusade
  • Frederick II
  • Guelphs and Ghibellines
  • Innocent III
  • The Magna Carta
  • Sicily's rulers
  • The end of the Hohenstaufens
  • Ghengis Khan and the Mongol invasion
  • The lack of an emperor and 'fist-law'
  • The Kyffhauser legend
  • Rudolf of Habsburg
  • Victory over Otakar
  • The power of the House of Habsburg is established
  • 25. Cities and Citizens
  • Markets and towns
  • Merchants and knights
  • Guilds
  • Building cathedrals
  • Mendicant friars and penitential priests
  • The persecution of Jews and heretics
  • The Babylonian Captivity of the popes
  • The Hundred Years War with England
  • Joan of Arc
  • Life at court
  • Universities
  • Charles IV and Rudolf the Founder
  • 26. A New Age
  • The burghers of Florence
  • Humanism
  • The rebirth of antiquity
  • The flowering of art
  • Leonardo da Vinci
  • The Medici
  • Renaissance popes
  • New ideas in Germany
  • The art of printing
  • Gunpowder
  • The downfall of Charles the Bold
  • Maximilian, the Last Knight
  • Mercenaries
  • Fighting in Italy
  • Maximilian and Durer
  • 27. A New World
  • The compass
  • Spain and the conquest of Granada
  • Columbus and Isabella
  • The discovery of America
  • The modern era
  • Columbus's fate
  • The conquistadores
  • Hernando Cortez
  • Mexico
  • The fall of Montezuma
  • The Portuguese in India
  • 28. A New Faith
  • The building of the Church of St Peter
  • Luther's theses
  • Luther's forerunner, Hus
  • The burning of the papal bull
  • Charles V and his empire
  • The sack of Rome
  • The Diet of Worms
  • Luther at the Wartburg
  • The translation of the Bible
  • Zwingli
  • Calvin
  • Henry VIII
  • Turkish conquests
  • The division of the empire
  • 29. The Church at War
  • Ignatius of Loyola
  • The Council of Trent
  • The Counter-Reformation
  • The St Bartholomew's Day Massacre
  • Philip of Spain
  • The Battle of Lepanto
  • The revolt of the Low Countries
  • Elizabeth of England
  • Mary Stuart
  • The sinking of the Armada
  • English trading posts in America
  • The East India Companies
  • The beginnings of the British empire
  • 30. Terrible Times
  • The Defenestration of Prague
  • The Thirty Years War
  • Gustavus Adolphus
  • Wallenstein
  • The Peace of Westphalia
  • The devastation of Germany
  • The persecution of witches
  • The birth of a scientific understanding of the world
  • Nature's laws
  • Galileo and his trial
  • 31. An Unlucky King and a Lucky King
  • The Stuart king, Charles I
  • Cromwell and the Puritans
  • The rise of England
  • The year of the Glorious Revolution
  • France's prosperity
  • Richelieu's policies
  • Mazarin
  • Louis XIV
  • A king's lever
  • Versailles
  • Sources of the government's wealth
  • The peasants' misery
  • Predatory wars
  • 32. Meanwhile, Looking Eastwards...
  • Turkish conquests
  • Insurrection in Hungary
  • The siege of Vienna
  • Jan Sobieski and the relief of Vienna
  • Prince Eugene
  • Ivan the Terrible
  • Peter the Great
  • The founding of St Petersburg
  • Charles XII of Sweden
  • The race to Stralsund
  • The expansion of Russian might
  • 33. A Truly New Age
  • The Enlightenment
  • Tolerance, reason and humanity
  • Critique of the Enlightenment
  • The rise of Prussia
  • Frederick the Great
  • Maria Theresa
  • The Prussian army
  • The Grand Coalition
  • The Seven Years War
  • Joseph II
  • The abolition of serfdom
  • Overhasty reforms
  • The American War of Independence
  • Benjamin Franklin
  • Human rights and negro slaves
  • 34. A Very Violent Revolution
  • Catherine the Great
  • Louis XV and Louis XVI
  • Life at court
  • Justice and the landowning nobility
  • The Rococo
  • Marie Antoinette
  • The convocation of the Estates-General
  • The storming of the Bastille
  • The sovereignty of the people
  • The National Assembly
  • The Jacobins
  • The guillotine and the Revolutionary Tribunal
  • Danton
  • Robespierre
  • The Reign of Terror
  • The sentencing of the king
  • The foreigners defeated
  • Reason
  • The Directory
  • Neighbouring republics
  • 35. The Last Conqueror
  • Napoleon in Corsica
  • To Paris
  • The siege of Toulon
  • The conquest of Italy
  • The Egyptian expedition
  • The coup d'etat
  • The consulate and the Code Napoleon
  • Emperor of the French
  • Victory at Austerlitz
  • The end of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation
  • Francis I
  • The Continental System
  • Victory over Russia
  • Spain and the War of Spanish Resistance
  • Aspern and Wagram
  • The German uprising
  • The Grande Armee
  • The retreat from Moscow
  • The Battle of Leipzig
  • The Congress of Vienna
  • Napoleon's return from Elba
  • Waterloo
  • St Helena
  • 36. Men and Machines
  • The Biedermeier era
  • Steam engines, steamships, locomotives, the telegraph
  • Spinning machines and mechanical looms
  • Coal and iron
  • Luddites
  • Socialist ideas
  • Marx and his theory of class war
  • Liberalism
  • The revolutions of 1830 and 1848
  • 37. Across the Seas
  • China before 1800
  • The Opium war
  • The Taiping Rebellion
  • China's submission
  • Japan in 1850
  • Revolution in support of the Mikado
  • Japan's modernisation with foreign assistance
  • America after 1776
  • The slave states
  • The North
  • Abraham Lincoln
  • The Civil War
  • 38. Two New States in Europe
  • Europe after 1848
  • The Emperor Franz Josef and Austria
  • The German Confederation
  • France under Napoleon III
  • Russia
  • Spain's decline
  • The liberation of the peoples of the Balkans
  • The fight for Constantinople
  • The kingdom of Sardinia
  • Cavour
  • Garibaldi
  • Bismarck
  • The reform of the army in defiance of the constitution
  • The Battle of Koniggratz
  • Sedan
  • The founding of the German empire
  • The Paris Commune
  • Bismarck's social reforms
  • Dismissal of the Iron Chancellor
  • 39. Dividing Up the World
  • Industry
  • Markets and sources of raw materials
  • Britain and France
  • The Russo-Japanese War
  • Italy and Germany
  • The race to mobilize
  • Austria and the East
  • The outbreak of the First World War
  • New weapons
  • Revolution in Russia
  • The American intervention
  • The terms of peace
  • Scientific advance
  • End
  • 40. The Small Part of the History of the World Which I Have Lived Through Myself: Looking Back
  • The growth of the world's population
  • The defeat of the central-European powers during the First World War
  • The incitement of the masses
  • The disappearance of tolerance from political life in Germany, Italy, Japan and Soviet Russia
  • Economic crisis and the outbreak of the Second World War
  • Propaganda and reality
  • The murder of the Jews
  • The atomic bomb
  • The blessings of science
  • The collapse of the Communist system
  • International aid efforts as a reason for hope
Review by Booklist Review

This is the first English translation of a book written in 1935 in German and translated into 18 languages. Thirty years later, a second German edition was published with a new final chapter. In 40 brief chapters, Gombrich relates the history of humankind from the Stone Age through World War II. In between are historic accounts of such topics as cave people and their inventions (including speech), ancient life along the Nile and in Mesopotamia and Greece, the growth of religion, the Dark Ages, the age of chivalry, the New World, and the Thirty Years' War. Much of this history is told through concise sketches of such figures as Confucius, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Jesus Christ, Charlemagne, Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon, and Columbus. Gombrich was asked to write a history geared to younger readers, so the book is filled with innumerable dates and facts, yet it is one to be read by adults. With 41 black-and-white woodcut illustrations and nine maps, it is a timeless and engaging narrative of the human race. --George Cohen Copyright 2005 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This is an unusual work for Yale: a children's history originally published 70 years ago. But it is a work one can quickly come to love. Gombrich, later known as an art historian, wrote this primer in 1935, when he was a young man in Vienna (it was soon banned by the Nazis as too "pacifist"). Rewritten (and updated) in English mainly by Gombrich himself (who died in 2001, age 92, while working on it), the book is still aimed at children, as the language makes clear: "Then, slowly the clouds parted to reveal the starry night of the Middle Ages." But while he addresses his readers directly at times, Gombrich never talks down to them. Using vivid imagery, storytelling and sly humor, he brings history to life in a way that adults as well as children can appreciate. The book displays a breadth of knowledge, as Gombrich begins with prehistoric man and ends with the close of WWII. In the final, newly added chapter, Gombrich's tone sadly darkens as he relates the rise of Hitler and his own escape from the Holocaust-children, he writes, "must learn from history how easy it is for human beings to be transformed into inhuman beings"-and ends on a note of cautious optimism about humanity's future. (Oct. 13) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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