A Little History of the World

“A Little History of the World” presents Ernst Gombrich’s lively and involving history to English-language readers for the first time.

In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no respect of a job, the twenty-six-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and “Eine kurz Weltgeschichte für jinge Leser” was published in Vienna to immediate success, and is now available in twenty-five languages across the world.

Toward the end of his life, Gombrich embarked upon a revision and, at last, an English translation; in forty concise chapters, he tells the story of man from the Stone Age to the atomic bomb. In between emerges a colourful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, and the spread and limitations of science. This is a text dominated not by dates and facts, but by the sweep of mankind’s experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity’s achievements and an acute witness to its frailties.

The product of a generous and humane sensibility, this timeless account makes intelligible the full span of human history.