Revised and brought up to the end of the second World War by Raymond Postgate Vol. 2

Volume 1
Wells develops the idea of different races of mankind. He is balanced in his review of races and rejects the idea of any racial superiority. I enjoyed this topic because it explains many of the conflicts in our world society.

Volume 2
Very good overview of history however he spends too much time on details of WWII battles.

I enjoy his personal opinions because I find are very similar to my own. ( )

Wells, H G (Herbert George) 1866-1946. Sadly, this "history" has baggage. http://www.cracked.com/article_17198_5-great-men-who-built-their-careers-plagiar...

It is "difficult" -- impossible -- to overlook the injustice and greed indulged by Wells at the threshold of his career in stealing so much content from such a vulnerable gentle and elderly woman: Florence Deeks. And not content with conspiring with her publisher to steal and purloin her submitted manuscript, Wells "crushed" her in court proceedings she could not afford to hire attorneys to dispute. So there's that.

Originally published in two volumes in 1920, and reissued in "One Volume Edition" a year later, and thereafter reprinted multiple times, with the last in December 1929, but the Introduction claims this is "the third edition".

Asserts that "teaching of history" is in "an unsatisfactory condition" particularly for being "too partial and narrow". Provides "universal history" to supplant the aggregate of the national histories, in a spirit and manner done to show "history as one whole" across the ages races and nations, rather than "the reigns and pedigrees and campaigns".

Wells preaches against the Medieval Church, missing the record of remarkable peace between warring tribes enjoying a lingua latina common tongue and the wonderful literature of the monks. He remains focused on the persecution of "heretics" and the Schisms among the senile Popes--who rarely served more than two years before dying of old age. XXXII.14 p.660.

I must draw out the profound truth so pertinent to America in the post-2016 era: "The rules and ways by which men [citizens] reach power are of very great importance in human affairs. The psychology of the ruler is a science that has still to be properly studied. We have seen the Roman Republic wrecked, and here we see the church failing in its world mission very largely through ineffective electoral methods." P. 665.

This is the 2d Volume of the 2-volume library of knowledge authenticated by a remarkable plagiarist. H.G. Wells made his first liberating income from the 1920 publication largely pilfered from the lifetime of work performed by the brilliant and discerning Canadian scholar, Florence Deeks, whose work had been submitted to the same publisher.

This subsequent revision by H.G. Wells was never purged of the plagiarisms, but much scholarship, and H. G. Wells himself by dying in 1946, moved on, and is evidenced in this 1971 edition produced by his son, Professor G. P. Wells, and Raymond Postgate, "the noted writer".

Volume 2 begins with Chapter 31 - Christendom and the Crusades, and essentially ends with the Cold War set in place between USSR and USA, with brief notes on satellite launching and nuclear weapon competition, Castro's victory against Batista in 1959 followed by a stealthy 1962 missile crisis, and the Chinese under Mao placing embassies in uncommitted nations' capitals.

In the penultimate paragraph, the author documents Nasser ordering UN troops out of the Gaza strip while closing Israel's access to the Gulf of Aqaba and barring the Suez Canal. Ahmad Asaad Shukhairy, a "Palestinian Arab leader", is quoted on the prospect of "killing all young Jewish males and taking charge of the women and children". The book ends with the six day war, noting that "Neither of the two major powers had intervened to help its presumed friends." [1045]

The authors add a concluding comment on that fact that Wells ended all of his earlier editions on a note of confidence: "He saw the future as bright." He felt that dozens of "keen youngsters" were replacing the old, and he like to speak of them as in "open conspiracy". The authors assure us "But before he died he abandoned this optimism. So must we."

The book ends in doubt, "but doubt is not defeat". As Kipling wrote "the cities rise again". "Greece was a tiny light in a vast encircling night of ignorance and brutality". [Of course that is quite wrong from the Persian or Lake Cities, and African POV.] "After a thousand years of darkness, a very few men indeed were responsible for the great renascence of Europe. [Quite wrong again, as to the chiasm of "darkness"!] The authors look to the "men and women of this generation which path the world will follow in the coming years."

In the introduction, Wells explained that after World War I many people were asking fundamental questions about the nature of man and how such a tragedy could have happened. In order to help answer these questions, it was necessary for people to have an understanding of the events in history that led to the war, and Wells recognized that many people did not have this knowledge. Since the political climate of today has been influenced by thousands of years of history, he saw that there was a need for a comprehensive history book that was written by a non-historian for non-historians, so he wrote one. The Outline of History begins at the formation of the universe and ends around 1969 and has been updated and revised several times. I don’t know if my edition is the most recent.

This was quite a book. My two volume set was about 1100 pages and took me over three months to finish counting breaks to read other things. It wasn’t an easy read, but it was definitely worth it. I was absolutely enthralled by his chapters on pre-history, although some of the chapters on recorded history were a little dry. I’d like to think that I know more about history than the average person, but I learned a lot of things that I didn’t know. His discussions of Christianity and Islam were particularly enlightening (pun intended). Wells freely admits his biases since no book can be written without bias on the part of the author, but since most of my biases are the same as his, I liked him anyway.

This book absolutely changed the way I think about the world, and I really waffled between giving it four or five stars. I ultimately deducted a star because of the handful of dry chapters scattered throughout the book and because even with the updates, I can’t help but feel that it’s a bit outdated. Overall, I think Wells did exactly what he set out to do: he wrote a history book that is easy for people who aren’t historians to understand. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested. ( )