Geoffrey Blainey

#2

2006

Australian historian Blaine offers a history of the recently departed century. This was a entury that opened with high hopes and grave perils and ended in the same fashion. In between, the continued ascendancy and ending of European supremacy, two world wars, rival totalitarian ideologies, the spreadof democracy, the withering of empires, mass movements, and technologies, scientific, and medical advances of lardge proportions took place. Blain covers this while exploring developments across the world's landscape. The largest focus is on Europe, perhaps naturally, but he does discuss occurrences in the Western Hemisphere, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, although the coverage of both Latin American and African is quite brief. Including key personalities, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Einstein, Gandhi, Castro, and Gorbachev.

#3

2001

"Narrated by a distinguished historian, here is an account of the grand adventure of human history. It is the story of the world's people during the last four million years, beginning before the human race moved out of Africa to explore and settle the other continents, and ending with the recent millennium.". "Geoffrey Blainey's major themes are the development of technology and skills, the rise of major religions, the course of empires, and the role of geography, which has often governed what could not happen. He concerns himself not only with major transformations but also with what people ate and how hard they worked in order to earn their daily bread; with the intense impact of the moon, the stars, and the night sky on human experience and on the ways in which the universe was perceived."--BOOK JACKET.