The Book (1300+ pages) – A Family history of Humanity by Simon Sebag Montefiore

I accidentally came upon a copy of this  book (first published in 2022) and bought it out of curiosity since my wife also  likes to read about history. The Table of Content (TOC) of this book alone takes up 16 pages of small prints. A quick scanning of the TOC reveals that it covers the period from 70,000 BC to the present in 22 chapters. The Preface, Acknowledgement, and Introduction take up another 14 pages. At my advanced age, the book will certainly occupy my remaining life time to read.

The basic thesis of the book seems to state the fact that human history were dominated and propagated by family dynasties from ancient times to current democracies and totalitarian states. The various chapters (described as “ACTS”) simply describe all the known families from ancient tribal leaders to modern rulers of the current capitalistic as well as socialistic countries. A minor criticism of the book is the relative absence of two thousand years of the history of Chinese dynasties which will further booster the author’s thesis.  This is understandable since no one person can be expert in everything. The writer only wants to use evidences/facts that he is familiar with to substantiate his points.

I highly recommend that interested readers buy a used copy of this book (or paperback edition when available) to save cost and read it as interests dictate and/or use it as an entertaining reference book from time to time. I may give additional reports on this book as I peruse it .