Book list
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Historian and best-selling author Fromkin conducts the reader on a fascinating journey through human time, commencing at the dawn of civilization and concluding at the brink of the twenty-first century. Employing an engaging storytelling technique, the author interweaves a broad range of complex information into a comprehensible and condensed format, identifying the major social, educational, scientific, economic, and governmental trends he believes have significantly contributed to the evolution of humankind. As Fromkin moves seamlessly through time, he is able to demonstrate how many seemingly unrelated actions and events inevitably led to the emergence of the cultural mores and institutions that characterize contemporary society in what he terms the American centuries. Solid narrative history sure to appeal to the same type of audience that made How the Irish Saved Civilization (1996) such a huge hit. --Margaret Flanagan

Library Journal
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This is a conscious attempt to relate world history in about 250 pages. Actually, its eight stages of history are set in the West, from the emergence of humans in Africa to the rise of Western governments. Fromkin sees history as natural, not divine, "the story of the human race in the world," and believes that humans are therefore responsible for their own future. For high school, public, and college libraries. (LJ 10/15/98) (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus
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A skimpy survey of all human history, marked by a curious thesis. As Fromkin, who teaches international relations, history, and law at Boston University (A Peace to End All Peace, 1989), relates it, some years ago a Wall Street hedge fund manager challenged him to "tell the story of humanity in the universe——where else?——and make it whole." With financiers, one supposes, not particularly concerned with the niceties of political correctness, Fromkin answers that challenge with a World Civ 101 syllabus, one that views history as a tale of constant improvements leading to "the only civilization still surviving, the scientific one of the modern world——and, more pointedly, the civilization of the US, which he believes has reached an apogee of mortal achievement. Fromkin begins at the beginning, brushing aside countless eras and a great deal of modern scholarship to deliver unilluminating statements like "Our remote primate ancestors were some sort of apes." He proceeds to inform his readers that the Sumerians of the Uruk period more or less invented civilization, but it was one without a soul—a development that had to await the advent of Judeo-Christian thought. He also maintains that the world owes a debt to the West for its gift of rationalism, which is the progenitor of modern science, even if that doctrine was inconveniently delivered at the point of a sword and the end of a musket; and that robber barons like Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan are to be forgiven for their misdeeds because, after all, they encouraged dreams of world peace. Fromkin's rose-colored and simplistic view of scientific progress and the superiority of American virtues is oddly refreshing, old-fashioned as it is. But aside from bankers needing a refresher course in the humanities, it's hard to imagine any other audience for his work. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
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As its subtitle indicates, this is a broad, ambitious work. Boston University historian Fromkin (A Peace to End All Peace) guides readers on a whirlwind journey from the dawn of time to the present, touching on subjects as wide-ranging as Jane Goodall's observations of chimpanzees, Pizarro's conquest of Peru and Thomas Edison's ingenious inventions. The main subject is human civilization: what it is; how it came about; why civilizations rose and fell; what the future of civilization itself may be. Beginning with the city-states of ancient Mesopotamia, humanity gradually transformed from a herd of nomadic hunter-gatherers to an ordered society. The ancients invented agriculture, politics and religion?all while struggling with the ever-present barbarians who threatened to destroy them. Central to Fromkin's story is his account of how Western civilization?although by no means the most "advanced" civilization of its day?managed to conquer and eclipse its rivals and dominate the world to such an extent that "modernization" and "Westernization" have come to be synonymous. The final section, on the future of civilization, sometimes sinks into banalities ("For countries, as for people, becoming too wealthy or too powerful tends to be dangerous"). Of course, any work that combines such brevity with such broad scope is bound to be somewhat superficial. Nevertheless, Fromkin is a skillful raconteur with a keen eye for the telling anecdote and a conquistador's power to cover vast swaths of territory in a short amount of time. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved