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hhiggison 's review for:
The World: A Family History of Humanity
by Simon Sebag Montefiore
To be sure, this is a wildly ambitious thing to attempt, and I will say that Montefiore certainly puts a good try at it, but in the end, even by the parameters he laid out in the beginning, I'm can't quite say he was successful. Weird focus choices at points, over-confident assertions I know to be in debate, and a few which I know to be nothing more than incorrect pop history factoids help to detract throughout. But again, it is certainly a project that at best can be done by a jack of all trades and a master of none, so to be expected, perhaps, and whatever its faults, insofar as a book like this exists, can there be much better? I dunno... It might be a project that will always fail.