The product of a generous and humane sensibility, this timeless account makes intelligible the full span of human history. This is a text dominated not by dates and facts, but by the sweep of mankind's experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements and an acute witness to its frailties. In between emerges a colorful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, and the spread and limitations of science. In forty concise chapters, Gombrich tells the story of man from the stone age to the atomic bomb. Superbly designed and freshly illustrated, this is a book to be savored and collected. A Little History of the World presents his lively and involving history to English-language readers for the first time. Toward the end of his long life, Gombrich embarked upon a revision and, at last, an English translation.

Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser was published in Vienna to immediate success, and is now available in seventeen languages across the world. In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, the 26-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited by a publishing acquaintance to attempt a history of the world for younger readers.

A brief history of the world gombrich