The Way of the World

Description

How did we get here? David Fromkin provides arresting and dramatic answers to the questions we ask ourselves as we approach the new millennium. He maps and illuminates the paths by which humanity came to its current state, giving coherence and meaning to the main turning points along the way by relating them to a vision of things to come. His unconventional approach to narrating universal history is to focus on the relevant past and to single out the eight critical evolutions that brought the world from the Big Bang to the eve of the twenty-first century. He describes how human beings survived by adapting to a world they had not yet begun to make their own, and how they created and developed organized society, religion, and warfare. He emphasizes the transformative forces of art and the written word, and the explosive effects of scientific discoveries. He traces the course of commerce, exploration, the growth of law, and the quest for freedom, and details how their convergence led to the world of today. - Jacket flap.

First Sentence

Tens of thousands of years ago, in a cave in southwestern Europe, a shaman clad in bearskin told tales of past and future to his rapt followers.

Subjects

Other Editions

• The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of the Twenty-first CenturyPaperbackVintage2000-01-25
• The way of the worldKnopf1999-01-01
• The Way of the WorldHardcoverAlfred A. Knopf1999-01-01
• Shi jie zhi daoJiu jing chu ban she gu fen you xian gong si2000-01-01