The World: A Family History

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I read somewhere that Montefiore had seen, as a child, Toynbee’s A Study of History and mused then upon whether he might one day write a similar work. This seems similar to the multitude of people who have proclaimed as children that they would become Prime Minister or President of their country. Are these ambitions anything more valuable than egocentric vanity? The Romanovs' is his latest history book. He has now completed his Moscow Trilogy of novels featuring Benya Golden and Comrade Satinov, Sashenka, Dashka and Fabiana.... and Stalin himself.

Jasanoff, Maya (22 May 2023). "The History of Nepo Babies Is the History of Humanity". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X . Retrieved 1 August 2023. Unsurprisingly, power has often adhered to families as megalomaniacs who are stunned by their mortality seek to evade it by resort to dynasty. So a family focus is logical in those instances; however, there are as many, or more, instances where power passes outside the family. So it is questionable whether there really is a family-focus. One interesting aspect to the family-focus, however, comes in his extending biographical details to notable individuals’ childhood and their un-notable forebears. This is the sort of thing that one finds in a biography, but not so often in a wide-ranging history. I must say, though, that, having read the whole book, I gained little sense of “the capacity for joy and kindness” or “ the faces of love and the devotion of family.” Somewhat off-putting was the number of times Montefiore’s own family popped unexpectedly into view. As part of this trend, we are told of his own schoolboy interview of Margaret Thatcher, and her apparent reaction to his cheek by determining never again to be subjected to such an interview. There is a little vain self-aggrandisement to this. Important and mesmerizing.” —Michael Beschloss, New York Times best-selling author of Presidents of War Montefiore also takes an infectious delight in pithy summaries of history’s biggest players, from Martin Luther (“A vicious and visceral polemicist… fixated on faeces and sex”) to General Kitchener (“a repressed homosexual who combined steely acumen, vindictive ambition and porcelain collecting”).Compelling, moving, epic and diverse, Montefiore’s wonderful storytelling prowess and the wide research pulls off this unparalleled world history in a single narrative with unforgettable style. All the drama of humankind is here from cavemen to Putin and Zelensky’ Olivette Otele David Shasha (15 June 2010). "Moses Montefiore: The Most Important Jew of the 19th Century". Huffington Post . Retrieved 27 January 2016.

The real problem of humanity,’ said Edward O Wilson, ‘is we have Palaeolithic emotions, mediaeval institutions and Godlike technology.’ Just because we are the smartest ape ever created, just because we have solved many problems so far, it does not mean we will solve everything. Human history is like one of those investment warning clauses: is no guarantee of future results. In this work of astonishing scope and erudition, Montefiore interweaves the stories of the servants, courtiers and kings, pioneers, preachers and philosophers who have made history. A brilliant synthesis that will impart fresh insight to even the most learned readers’ Henry Kissinger Weber, Caroline (5 December 2008). "Stalin's Servant -- and Victim". The Wall Street Journal . Retrieved 1 September 2023. Thrift, Sarah (19 March 2014). "Political Book Awards winners announced". Politicos. Archived from the original on 29 June 2017 . Retrieved 25 January 2016. The technicolour cast includes the Borgias, the Habsburgs, the Kennedys and the Nehrus. Between the great, the good, the damned and the merely incompetent or criminal, there are far too many stars to mention. But some stand out:The World: A Family History of Humanity is the latest book written by Montefiore, a historian who has written books on Stalin and the Romanovs. His expertise is on the personal and political, writing about people in power in both their personal and professional lives. This book is a look through the entirety of human history from the first family who walked on the shores of Britain to Putins invasion of Ukraine. In this book you meet hundreds of characters through a series of dynasties across the world. The story is told through their interconnected world and often changes viewpoints from across the world in a broadly chronological format.

Grushin, Olga (16 May 2016). " 'The Romanovs: 1613-1918,' by Simon Sebag Montefiore". The New York Times . Retrieved 1 September 2023. Several of Montefiore's books are now being developed as either films or TV drama series. In February 2017, Angelina Jolie announced that she was developing "Simon Sebag Montefiore's Catherine the Great and Potemkin" with Universal Studios. [26] Also in early 2017, the film studio Lionsgate Films announced it had bought Montefiore's Jerusalem: the Biography to make it into a long running multi episodic TV drama series which will be "character-driven, action-filled account of war, betrayal, faith, fanaticism, slaughter, persecution and co-existence in the universal holy city through the ages." [27] Montefiore has likened it to Game of Thrones. [28] For any reader with the stomach for bloodshed and megalomaniac ambition, for anyone with a taste for Ptolemaic depravities or who would simply like to spend some quality time with China’s imperial eunuchs, Montefiore’s ‘World’ . . . will deliver it and more in spades. The author’s major achievement is to make us see the world through a different lens – to make the unfamiliar familiar and, more important, the familiar unfamiliar . . . Europe would more than catch up . . . but it is that other world that this book brings most vividly, almost feverishly, to life. There is hardly a dull paragraph’ David Crane ― THE SPECTATOR On the other hand though, it’s worth recording that SSM does perform a kind of service through all the schoolboy chortling. If the book is a bit light on man’s spiritual journey in ancient times, it’s clear enough that most other historians have failed to convey what obsessive and saucy boys and girls we have always been, everywhere. It is simply amazing how many different cultures were fixated on genitalia. From “Abarsam [who] had himself castrated and sent his testicles to the king in a box of salt – surely an example of protesting too much”. to ”After [Andonilos] had been hung upside down in the Hippodrome, his eyes were gouged out, his genitals amputated, his teeth extracted, his face burned..”

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In this work of astonishing scope and erudition, Simon Sebag Montefiore interweaves the stories of the servants, courtiers, and kings, pioneers, preachers, and philosophers who have made history. A brilliant synthesis that will impart fresh insight to even the most learned readers.”— Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State Then again, as Montefiore reminds us, slavery has been one of the most constant features of global history – not least in Africa, where it long pre-dated the arrival of Europeans as “the main form of wealth” and long continued after its abolition elsewhere. (The reason – or per­haps pretext – for the British occupation of Sudan in the 1880s was to stop the huge trade in slaves there.) HAJIPOUR: Absolutely. I mean, she's in the book. Her singing that song is the sort of climax of Camelot in many ways. And the Kennedys are a big part of this story. And in case one thinks dynasties are over, in most of the rest of the world, for all sorts of reasons, people are returning to dynasties, to clans, to families of different sorts.

The New Yorker noted that the book was “A monumental survey of dynastic rule: how to get it, how to keep it, how to squander it . . . Montefiore energetically fulfills his promise to write a 'genuine world history, not unbalanced by excessive focus on Britain and Europe.' In zesty sentences and lively vignettes, he captures the widening global circuits of people, commerce, and culture.” [39] Anderson, Hephzibah (2 January 2008). "A.L. Kennedy's 'Day', Montefiore's 'Young Stalin' Win Costas". Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved 4 May 2009. Regardless of my personal reading experience, it would be a crime not to mention the extraordinary and out-of-this-world research behind this book. Spanning millennia and continents, it covers the history of the world as we know it from the perspective of prominent families, some more well-known than others, but all of them fascinating nonetheless. I was mesmerised by this comprehensive look at world history and ultimately saddened to realise that, throughout the years, conflict, death and the suffering of millions of humans usually begin with the greed of a few.Darius the Great defeated eight rivals for the throne of Persia and ensured stability by marrying nearly all his female relations. Ruling with splendour and conquest for nearly 40 years until 486 BC, he declared: “I am Darius, King of Kings. Whoever helped my family, I favoured; whoever was hostile, I eliminated.” The appeal of such chronicles has something to do with the way they schematize history in the service of a master plot, identifying laws or tendencies that explain the course of human events. Western historians have long charted history as the linear, progressive working out of some larger design—courtesy of God, Nature, or Marx. Other historians, most influentially the fourteenth-century scholar Ibn Khaldun, embraced a sine-wave model of civilizational growth and decline. The cliché that “history repeats itself” promotes a cyclical version of events, reminiscent of the Hindu cosmology that divided time into four ages, each more degenerate than the last. Obituary, BJPsych Bulletin, Royal College of Psychiatrists, "Stephen Sebag-Montefiore Doctor and psychotherapist"