The Outline of History

Look! Nonfiction!

I have a confession to make.  I love books.

Okay... not much of a confession there...

So, let's move on to the real confession...

I really can't stand most nonfiction.  It tends to be dry and boring and I just can't get through it most of the time.  It really annoys me because I really like to read and I genuinely enjoy learning new things.

However... most nonfiction just...  I can't get into it.  There have been a few exceptions and usually they are nonfiction written by authors I usually like.

H.G. Wells' The Outline of History: The Whole Story of Man is one of those exceptions, but I'm not sure why.  I mean, it does have it's dry moments.  Especially if you get the edition printed in 1971 with bits added by H.G. Wells' son.  The first chapters on evolution and early history as now known (well, known in the 70s) are the driest chapters I've ever read.  My interest in such things really drove me through those chapters quickly.  The end chapters that talk of modern events slip back into the same dryness.  It made reading the book difficult because you could tell when H.G. Wells was writing and when he... wasn't.

On the other hand, this book is amazing.  If you have even a passing interest in history and a wish to understand events and the cycles human beings as a civilization constantly fall into, you should really give this book a peek.  It really explains H.G. Wells' basis for his opinions stated in his other books or represented in his fictional works.  The whole book was an eye-opener for me because I never really looked at history in that way.

I always read about stuff happening in the past, but if it was more than 100 years ago, I was like, "Well, that happened a really long time ago.  It's cool, but it's mostly just stories we don't want to repeat anymore."  However, the book gave me a scope of how much a really long time ago was.  I mean, the past two thousand years is just the tip of the iceberg!  And look at how far we've come in the past 100 years!  It's amazing and confounding how little the world really changed before then and how little it's really changed despite the onslaught of changes we've gotten through industrialization and the internet.  I read this book months ago and my brain is still trying to catch up with the new world view my brain keeps trying to adopt from reading that book.

How crazy is that?

So, if you have a passing interest in history or sociology, you should give this book a peek.  If you like H.G. Wells, you should find a copy at your local library or get an inter-library load and read it.  It's a great read, but you should be prepared to have to renew it a bit.  The book clocks in at 1288 pages and there aren't a whole lot of pictures, if you know what I mean.  It's worth slogging through, but there's a lot of information to absorb.  It's on the list of books I want to own, however, which is unusual for me, the queen of hating Nonfiction literature.  My high school senior English teacher is probably dancing with glee for no reason whenever I think of this book.

Sweet Dreams!