This is an attempt to tell the history of the world in 40,000 words (136 pages plus a 7 page chronology). If, like me, your history lessons covered Ancient Greece, Imperial Rome, Persia as Ancient History and the history of Europe as, well, History, this book is full of things your History teacher didn't tell you about. This book will also tell you about civilisations in Africa, China and India and how the far flung reaches of the globe were colonised by people crossing "land bridges", formed when the sea levels lowered or by conventional sailing, long before Europe "discovered" the rest of the world.

There are a lot of startling facts/theories to learn from this book, so much so, I'll end this review to say "buy it and have your misconceptions blown away".