ANDREW MARR

Our understanding of world history is changing, as new discoveries are made on all the continents and old prejudices are being challenged. In this truly global journey Andrew Marr revisits some of the traditional epic stories, from classical Greece and Rome to the rise of Napoleon, but surrounds them with less familiar material, from Peru to the Ukraine, China to the Caribbean. He looks at cultures that have failed and vanished, as well as the origins of today's superpowers, and finds surprising echoes and parallels across vast distances and epochs. This is a book about the great change-makers of history and their times, people such as Cleopatra, Genghis Khan, Galileo and Mao, but it is also a book about us. For 'the better we understand how rulers lose touch with reality, or why revolutions produce dictators more often than they produce happiness, or why some parts of the world are richer than others, the easier it is to understand our own times.' Fresh, exciting and vividly readable, this is popular history at its very best.

Esta historia del mundo es una manera nueva, fresca y amena de conocer nuestro pasado.El entendimiento de la historia mundial está cambiando. La antigua visión eurocentrista se ha ido transformado progresivamente y ha dado paso a un discurso inclusivo donde América, África y Asia juegan su papel y dejan de estar aisladas de los grandes acontecimientos históricos. Por ejemplo: recientemente se ha desvelado que la liberación de los siervos en Rusia, contemporánea de la Guerra Civil Americana, fue el detonante de la abolición de la esclavitud en los Estados Unidos. "Una historia del mundo" es un libro sobre los impulsores de los grandes cambios históricos, personajes como Cleopatra, Gengis Kan, Galileo o Mao, pero también sobre nosotros mismos.