The Spoils of Time: A History of the World from Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century

By C.V. Wedgwood

Book Overview

A wonderfully bold and wide-ranging narrative of the world's defining events from the beginning of civilization to the early Renaissance. "Her style is a marvel of clarity. And, in sheer readability... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385092091
• ISBN13: 9780385092098
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 347 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A great start

Reading this book is an unadulterated pleasure. Wedgewood has a wonderful eye for detail: she out-narrates some of the more absorbing novelists I've read recently. At the end, I was left with a lingering sadness that she didn't live to write the sequel: the world since 1550. (I don't know if she really planned to write a sequel; but the book is crying out for one.)

Excellent one volume world history

C.V. Wedgwood takes on a daunting task--a history of the world from the origins of civilization to 1600, all done in a few hundred pages. I came to this book hoping to put together in my mind all the jigsaws of world history that never quite interlocked together correctly (where did Genghis Khan come in relation to Attila the Hun? which of the Romans were which, and why? just how the heck did those hittites fit in there, and can anyone make sense of the Phoenicians?). The book met and surpassed my expectations. Ms. Wedgwood's book is almost conversational in its easy readability, and yet one gets a lot of facts and a lot of perspective in the mix. I came away learning a great deal, without the usual attendant mental strain. A good read, and a non-taxing one. I particularly enjoyed the "quick takes" she offers on each of the major world religions. I might have wished for more coverage of Scandinavia, of North America, and of Africa south of thenorthern region, but this is still a good global survey.