Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A magisterial world history unlike any other that tells the story of humanity through the one thing we all have in common familiesFrom the author of The Romanovs

A Best Book of the Year The New Yorker Smithsonian

Succession meets Game of Thrones The Spectator The author brings his cast of dynastic titans rogues and psychopaths to lifeAn epic that both entertains and informsThe Economist Best Books of the Year

Around 950000 years ago a family of five walked along the beach and left behind the oldest family footprints ever discovered For awardwinning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore these poignant familiar fossils serve as an inspiration for a new kind of world history one that is genuinely global spans all eras and all continents and focuses on the family ties that connect every one of us

In this epic eversurprising book Montefiore chronicles the worlds great dynasties across human history through palace intrigues love affairs and family lives linking grand themes of war migration plague religion and technology to the people at the heart of the human drama

It features a cast of extraordinary diversity in addition to rulers and conquerors there are priests charlatans artists scientists tycoons gangsters lovers husbands wives and children There is Hongwu the beggar who founded the Ming dynasty Ewuare the LeopardKing of Benin Henry Christophe King of Haiti Kamehameha the conqueror of Hawaii Zenobia the Arab empress who defied Rome Lady Murasaki the first female novelist Sayyida alHurra the Moroccan piratequeen Here too are moderns such as Indira Gandhi Margaret Thatcher Barack Obama Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky Here are the Caesars Medicis and Incas Ottomans and Mughals Bonapartes Habsburgs and Zulus Rothschilds Rockefellers and Krupps Churchills Kennedys Castros Nehrus Pahlavis and Kenyattas Saudis Kims and Assads

These powerful families represent the breadth of human endeavor with bloody succession battles treacherous conspiracies and shocking megalomania alongside flourishing culture moving romances and enlightened benevolence A dazzling achievement as spellbinding as fiction The World captures the whole human story in a single masterful narrative