A magisterial world history unlike any other that tells the story of
humanity through the one thing we all have in common: families - From
the New York Times best-selling author of The Romanovs
"Succession meets Game of Thrones." --The Spectator - "The
author brings his cast of dynastic titans, rogues and psychopaths to
life...An epic that both entertains and informs." --The Economist,
Best Books of the Year
Around 950,000 years ago, a family of five walked along the beach and
left behind the oldest family footprints ever discovered. For
award-winning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, these poignant, familiar
fossils serve as an inspiration for a new kind of world history, one
that is genuinely global, spans all eras and all continents, and focuses
on the family ties that connect every one of us.
In this epic, ever-surprising book, Montefiore chronicles the world's
great dynasties across human history through palace intrigues, love
affairs, and family lives, linking grand themes of war, migration,
plague, religion, and technology to the people at the heart of the human
drama. It features a cast of extraordinary diversity: in addition to
rulers and conquerors, there are priests, charlatans, artists,
scientists, tycoons, gangsters, lovers, husbands, wives, and children.
There is Hongwu, the beggar who founded the Ming dynasty; Ewuare, the
Leopard-King of Benin; Henry Christophe, King of Haiti; Kamehameha, the
conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, the Arab empress who defied Rome; Lady
Murasaki, the first female novelist; Sayyida al-Hurra, the Moroccan
pirate-queen. Here too are moderns such as Indira Gandhi, Margaret
Thatcher, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Volodymyr Zelensky. Here are
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. These powerful families represent the breadth of human endeavor,
with bloody succession battles, treacherous conspiracies, and shocking
megalomania alongside flourishing culture, moving romances, and
enlightened benevolence. A dazzling achievement as spellbinding as
fiction, The World captures the whole human story in a single,
masterful narrative.
