The Oxford Illustrated History of the World

Imagine the planet, as if from an immense distance of time and space, as a galactic observer might see it--with the kind of objectivity that we, who are enmeshed in our history, can-t attain.
The Oxford Illustrated History of the World encompasses the whole span of human history. It brings together some of the world's leading historians, under the expert guidance of Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, to tell the 200,000-year story of our world, from the emergence of homo sapiens through to the twenty-first century: the environmental convulsions; the interplay of ideas (good and bad); the cultural phases and exchanges; the collisions and collaborations in politics; the successions of states and empires; the unlocking of energy; the evolutions of economies; the contacts, conflicts, and contagions that have all contributed to making the world we now inhabit.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto is William P. Reynolds Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. His work, which has covered many fields and disciplines and has appeared in twenty-seven languages, has won him numerous awards, including the John Carter Brown Medal, a World History Association Book Prize (for Pathfinders, 2007), Spain-s national prizes for geography and foodwriting, and, most recently, the Gran Cruz de la Orden de Alfonso X el Sabio, Spain-s highest award for services to education and the arts.