4.0 out of 5 stars
Inclusive of almost all cultures
Reviewed in the United States on 9 November 2020
This is an interesting book. It's not really a timeline of EVERYONE but it is a timeline of people from EVERYWHERE. There are 146 people represented so there's not room to list EVERYONE. Some people are not individuals, but groups (like Farmers Through Time, North American People, The Islamic Golden Age, Merchants Through Time, etc).
I do not envy the authors in their attempt to be inclusive of all important people. No matter who they were to include or leave out, they'd not make everyone happy. But there are some really big names missing. Most famous people have a two page layout, but there aren't any layouts for people like Hitler, the Wright Brothers, Lewis & Clark, Winston Churchill, all the British monarchs, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Sir Francis Drake, Ferdinand Magellan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Neil Armstrong, etc. Although, to be fair, most of those names are momentarily mentioned on a few timeline pages interspersed between the people pages. They are mentioned but not even in a sentence. Just their name is on the timeline.
The authors also chose to include some people that are well known but not near as extraordinary as others that were left out. For instance, Oprah, Obama, J.K. Rowling, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Serena Williams, and LeBron James each have 2 page layouts. Interestingly enough, 5 of those 6 are African American. It's as though the authors are almost trying too hard to be inclusive of all cultures and races.
I do appreciate the attempt. We get to read about people we've never heard of - people famous in other countries or somewhat obscure names from US history. For instance, Qiu Jin, Wang Zhenyi, Nellie Fry, Hedy Lamarr, Wangari Maathai, Rigoberta Menchu and Madhuri Dixit, among many many others.
It's a neat book. There is one page, at the very beginning, where they claim cavemen lived 2.5 million years ago. But it's a brief part of an opening page. If you're a young earth believer, like my family, that's easy enough to ignore or even cross off. The rest of the book is great information.
There are also a few pages (mostly in the table of contents) that are a bit hard to read because it's black print on a dark teal page. But the rest of the book is fine. It could just be my eyes (but I'm only 40ish). And it's just those two pages.
Overall, it's a really neat book. And very nicely bound with thick, glossy pages.
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