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Rating: 
Summary: A rich and valuable historical resource unlike any other
Review: Every time I pick up this book I am sucked in, following one historical trail through the years and being distracted by another path, and then another. It is set up so brilliantly, each year broken down by category--politics, music, food, religion, etc--and covering both Western and some Eastern history, that it puts all of history into accessible context and perspective. After looking up a detail in 1099 about English royal politics, it is easy to trace the repurcussions year by year, and to quickly glance at the music, the French situation, the new foods, the new theater, the global exploration, the current Chinese dynasty, and myriad other details all the way up to the present. Or just follow Mozart's career, or the Industrial Revolution, or agricultural innovations. Sure, it is not intensely detailed on each event, but it makes a great jumping off point towards other reference material. It is also the most appreciated gift I have ever given. Let's just hope the publisher decides to reprint!
Rating:
Summary: The one absolutely indispensable chronological volume
Review: There are several good chronological overviews out there, but this one (overdue, after 11 years, for a newly revised edition) is the best I know of and the one I reach for most often. No matter what historical period your greatest interest falls in, you can browse through it year by year. You can look up your own birth year and those of friends and relatives and find out what was happening then, or refresh your memory of past times. You can follow the repercussions of a given incident from beginning to end while noting how the world continued to spin all the while. Of course it's heavily weighted toward more recent events (the 19th and 20th Centuries occupy 68% of the volume), but the detail is superb. You'll find *everything* in this book--kings and presidents and prime ministers, wars and assassinations, financial landmarks, inventions, new developments in science and research, the founding of universities, newspapers, paintings, sculpture, theater, ballet, music, industry, population, and that's just the year 1801! If you have any prospect of ever needing to know "what happened when," you need to own this book.
Rating:
Summary: The one absolutely indispensable chronological volume
Review: There are several good chronological overviews out there, but this one (overdue, after 11 years, for a newly revised edition) is the best I know of and the one I reach for most often. No matter what historical period your greatest interest falls in, you can browse through it year by year. You can look up your own birth year and those of friends and relatives and find out what was happening then, or refresh your memory of past times. You can follow the repercussions of a given incident from beginning to end while noting how the world continued to spin all the while. Of course it's heavily weighted toward more recent events (the 19th and 20th Centuries occupy 68% of the volume), but the detail is superb. You'll find *everything* in this book--kings and presidents and prime ministers, wars and assassinations, financial landmarks, inventions, new developments in science and research, the founding of universities, newspapers, paintings, sculpture, theater, ballet, music, industry, population, and that's just the year 1801! If you have any prospect of ever needing to know "what happened when," you need to own this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Ingenious concept, but don't take it at face value
Review: What a great idea: take nearly every year of human history and discuss the events as they unfold into a chain of causality. The effect on the reader is unparalleled.However, there are historical innacuraccies throughout the work. The reader is best advised to get a "twenty-thousand-foot-level" view of the era that interests them from which to pursue more exhaustive texts.
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