A Little History of the World

A Little History of the World is a history book by Ernst Gombrich. It was written in 1935 in Vienna, Austria when Gombrich was 26 years old. It is a fun and quick read. Within 40 chapters, Gombrich covers the dinosaurs; spans numerous civilizations, ideas and discoveries; and ends with dividing up the world after World War I. His writing is straightforward, mixing humour and empathy. I felt invited along a journey. Here is my favourite paragraph, making voyage!

· "Look carefully at the millions of shimmering white bubbles rising and then vanishing with each wave. Over and over again, new bubbles come to the surface and then vanish in time with the waves. For a brief instant, they are lifted on the wave’s crest and then they sink down and are seen no more. We are like that. Each one of us is no more than a tiny glimmering thing, a sparkling droplet on the waves of time which flow past beneath us into an unknown, misty future. We leap up, look around us and, before we know it, we vanish again. We can hardly be seen in the great river of time. New drops keep rising to the surface. And what we call our fate is no more than our struggle in that great multitude of droplets in the rise and fall of one wave. But we must make use of that moment. It is worth the effort."

I recommend reading A Little History of the World. No matter how much you know, to begin with, you’ll learn something new and expand your understanding. If we think about our past, we can assess where we are presently, and where we want to go.