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trib's review against another edition
5.0
Just beautiful. The collection at the British Museum remains available online, as does the BBC Radio series. If human history is something you enjoy, read this, listen to the radio series, and browse the collection on the web.
smummadi's review against another edition
5.0
Good non Eurocentric view as the 100 objects are distributed in a true world wide distribution .
anastasiadreaming's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
A broad-reaching and fascinating collection of information on historical artefacts.
annkniggendorf's review against another edition
5.0
I Just finished [a:Neil MacGregor|518030|Neil MacGregor|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-M-50x66.jpg]'s [b:A History of the World in 100 Objects|9553383|A History of the World in 100 Objects|Neil MacGregor|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41FfuJKNG1L._SL75_.jpg|14439910], ranging from the 2 million years old stone chopping tool to a contemporary credit card and a solar lamp (with charger).
This is easily the most entertaining - and enlightening - book on global history out there (global in the true sense of the word; though Greenland and Antarctica are under-represented)! I highly recommend investing your time in it. :-)
This is easily the most entertaining - and enlightening - book on global history out there (global in the true sense of the word; though Greenland and Antarctica are under-represented)! I highly recommend investing your time in it. :-)
agnewjacob120's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
4.5
Great variety in cultures and objects discussed and provides a broad range of perspectives and ideas!
thelibraryskeeper's review against another edition
5.0
I can honestly say that this is easily one of the very best books I have ever read.
After graduate school I haven't really been reading much in the branch of non fiction books and I've missed it. I love learning new things especially when they are presented in a way that is incredibly easy to read. This book was written after a series of BBC podcasts and its such a beautiful edition. I loved the pictures at the start of each chapter and that I can look online at more detailed full color images on the website.
This book is something I think everyone should read as it covers so many subjects, including the issues of ownership and museums. I have a graduate degree in religious studies so getting to read quite a few chapters covering world religions and mans understanding throughout history of religion was really an extra treat for me.
"When we look at the history of the world, it is very important to recognize that we are not looking at the history of different civilizations truncated and separated from each other. Civilizations have a huge amount of contact, and there is a kind of inter-connectedness. I have always thought of the history of the world not as a history of civilizations but as a history of world civilizations evolving in often similar, often diverse, ways, always interacting with each other."
After graduate school I haven't really been reading much in the branch of non fiction books and I've missed it. I love learning new things especially when they are presented in a way that is incredibly easy to read. This book was written after a series of BBC podcasts and its such a beautiful edition. I loved the pictures at the start of each chapter and that I can look online at more detailed full color images on the website.
This book is something I think everyone should read as it covers so many subjects, including the issues of ownership and museums. I have a graduate degree in religious studies so getting to read quite a few chapters covering world religions and mans understanding throughout history of religion was really an extra treat for me.
"When we look at the history of the world, it is very important to recognize that we are not looking at the history of different civilizations truncated and separated from each other. Civilizations have a huge amount of contact, and there is a kind of inter-connectedness. I have always thought of the history of the world not as a history of civilizations but as a history of world civilizations evolving in often similar, often diverse, ways, always interacting with each other."
vidhi26p's review against another edition
4.0
“Why is death at the heart of our cities?”
A really great, albeit a bit long, read! Broken up into short, easily digestible chapters, this chronological history of the world walks you through the British Museum century by century, and item by item. Asking the hard questions, while softly addressing the violent past of Britain, reading this history while in London added a new layer of richness, and made me miss how much I love learning about world history.
A really great, albeit a bit long, read! Broken up into short, easily digestible chapters, this chronological history of the world walks you through the British Museum century by century, and item by item. Asking the hard questions, while softly addressing the violent past of Britain, reading this history while in London added a new layer of richness, and made me miss how much I love learning about world history.
drollgorg's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
2.5
As a collection of explorations into the historical context and current interpretations of a variety of interesting archaeological artifacts, you'd have trouble doing better. Taken together as a cohesive history of human history, that's where it slips for me.
If you are trying to explore history through a collection of archaeological artifacts, the British Museum is probably the best possible single source you could have on hand. I've visited several times myself and it is a really amazing museum, a testament to how modern notions of a peoples rights to self-determination and to their own cultural heritage are holding back the advancement of the museum field. Due to its rich history of not being concerned with self-determination and cultural heritage, many of the objects in this book can pull double duty in terms of providing object lessons about history- you get a lot of information about when it was originally created, and then some extra coverage of whenever in the 18th-20th centuries the British got their hands on it.
Unfortunately, one of the weaknesses of this as a historiographic work is the fact that it ties itself too much to the British Museum as an institution. It's distracting and a waste of space to frequently find ways to tie in the experience of visiting the museum to the informational content of the book. Another similar weakness, but an even worse and more distracting one is that it overall anchors itself in the British cultural perspective of 2010- because the book began as a BBC podcast project, covering one item for every episode, it contains a lot of the contributions from interviews with various personages who are relevant in the field of whatever the object is. I'm pretty sure that these are just quotes from the podcast that have been trimmed and cleaned up, because they universally read like someone who's just been told about this object for the first time and has been asked a question about how they recognize the beginning of X idea from their own work in it. For a podcast, these are fine answers, but the book is already going in depth on each item and everything known about it, and the guests never have anything very substantive to add or observations that are more insightful than you're already getting from the entry.
Broadly speaking, I can see that they wanted to represent a lot of different cultures and track a majority of the most significant developments in human history across a wide spectrum. Unfortunately, the book is still rooted in and follows a developmental view of history centered on productive capacity and on the path to the rise of the most significant ideological structures that exist today, without much to challenge this procedural view, like the one you'd find in Sapiens, or Guns Germs & Steel (they even brought in Jared Diamond to talk about one of the objects, though I forget which. I don't think Jared Diamond is stupid, or that he describes the past inaccurately, but I think that history presented as progressive evolution is annoying, and they just keep doing that with every guest brought in to tie something to a more complex version of it in the present day.
As you can see, I didn't really rate the book that harshly, and at the end of the day it was definitely an interesting read, with plenty of things I learned from it. It just fails to break new ground as a work of history, apart from the innovation of its particular format, and has enough drawbacks to make it difficult to fully recommend it.
If you are trying to explore history through a collection of archaeological artifacts, the British Museum is probably the best possible single source you could have on hand. I've visited several times myself and it is a really amazing museum, a testament to how modern notions of a peoples rights to self-determination and to their own cultural heritage are holding back the advancement of the museum field. Due to its rich history of not being concerned with self-determination and cultural heritage, many of the objects in this book can pull double duty in terms of providing object lessons about history- you get a lot of information about when it was originally created, and then some extra coverage of whenever in the 18th-20th centuries the British got their hands on it.
Unfortunately, one of the weaknesses of this as a historiographic work is the fact that it ties itself too much to the British Museum as an institution. It's distracting and a waste of space to frequently find ways to tie in the experience of visiting the museum to the informational content of the book. Another similar weakness, but an even worse and more distracting one is that it overall anchors itself in the British cultural perspective of 2010- because the book began as a BBC podcast project, covering one item for every episode, it contains a lot of the contributions from interviews with various personages who are relevant in the field of whatever the object is. I'm pretty sure that these are just quotes from the podcast that have been trimmed and cleaned up, because they universally read like someone who's just been told about this object for the first time and has been asked a question about how they recognize the beginning of X idea from their own work in it. For a podcast, these are fine answers, but the book is already going in depth on each item and everything known about it, and the guests never have anything very substantive to add or observations that are more insightful than you're already getting from the entry.
Broadly speaking, I can see that they wanted to represent a lot of different cultures and track a majority of the most significant developments in human history across a wide spectrum. Unfortunately, the book is still rooted in and follows a developmental view of history centered on productive capacity and on the path to the rise of the most significant ideological structures that exist today, without much to challenge this procedural view, like the one you'd find in Sapiens, or Guns Germs & Steel (they even brought in Jared Diamond to talk about one of the objects, though I forget which. I don't think Jared Diamond is stupid, or that he describes the past inaccurately, but I think that history presented as progressive evolution is annoying, and they just keep doing that with every guest brought in to tie something to a more complex version of it in the present day.
As you can see, I didn't really rate the book that harshly, and at the end of the day it was definitely an interesting read, with plenty of things I learned from it. It just fails to break new ground as a work of history, apart from the innovation of its particular format, and has enough drawbacks to make it difficult to fully recommend it.