The Outline of History

Published in 1897, this story appeared two years after 'The Time Machine' and a year before 'War of the Worlds, containing themes of huge scale (space rather than time) from the first and intimations of the second with its passing reference to the observations of Martian astronomers.

It is a tale of near-apocalypse told in clinical and detached terms with little direct human drama whose main purpose is to trigger a feeling of awe not only at the immensity of space but of the random chance within it and the material insignificance of humanity faced with raw natural power.

Indeed, for all its pretension to be a tale of scientific vision, this story owes just as much to religious discourse as scientific. Like God, nature is (in this story) show more unknowable and surprising, with immense power to which we are but as flies. More pagan than Christian perhaps but bigger than us.

It was perhaps an expression of widespread cultural anxiety as science displaced God in the popular mind. It presents us with something that might be known but was not yet known. This was both impersonal and experienced by us as random, even if scientists might eventually master its laws.

Knowing the laws behind such major events might not, in fact, avail our survival if we discovered that the forces involved were so great that there was nothing we could do to avoid our near or actual annihiliation if we got in the way.

About two decades later Lovecraft would be working up such themes to a new level of despair and horror, replacing the old God or gods with unknown creatures who would have near god-like cosmic powers and be uninterested in our paltry existences as much as the 'star' of this story. show less

Having decided WWI was the "War to end all wars", Wells traverses human history from pre-history to the post-WWI era and still decides WWI was so bloody and atrocious that humanity would never again let itself come to global conflict.

Well, leaving off the hopelessly optimistic conclusion penned mere years before WWII, this is still one of my favorite world history works.

Among the wisdow Wells gets right in my opinion: "The natural political map of the world insists upon itself. It heaves and frets beneath the artificial political map like some misfitted giant."

That itself expains much of human history.

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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." show less

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.

Not such a great book for history. Wells was a great story writer but this work is full of his socialist and humanist philosophy.

An interesting survey of world history with Wells' biases.