Our preview of the big books of 2025

Riku Sayuj's Reviews > A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium

A People's History of the World by Chris Harman
Rate this book
Clear rating
1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars

by
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read A People's History of the World.
Sign In »

Reading Progress

January 2, 2015 – Started Reading
January 2, 2015 – Shelved
January 4, 2015 –
page 150
20.38% "Writers such as Bocaccio, Chaucer and, above all, Dante made a name for themselves by producing a secular literature written in their local idiom—and, in the process, gave it the prestige to begin its transition into a ‘national’ language."
January 5, 2015 –
page 260
35.33% "The founding of the new United States could only happen because the section of Pennsylvania’s population who backed independence took ‘dictatorial’ measures against those intent on clinging to the monarchy."
January 6, 2015 –
page 350
47.55% "No picking on Dickens pls!

The victims of the counter-revolution and the war do not figure in the horror stories about the revolution retailed by popular novelists, or even in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. For such writers, the death of a respectable gentleman or lady is a tragedy, that of a republican artisan or seamstress of no concern."
January 6, 2015 –
page 355
48.23% "Beethoven incorporated the melodies of revolutionary songs into his music and embodied the spirit of the revolutionary army in his great third symphony, the Eroica (although he removed the dedication to Napoleon in disgust after he proclaimed himself emperor)."
January 6, 2015 –
page 400
54.35% "Northern capital gained mightily from the civil war. There was a brief period in which it seemed the ex-slaves would also benefit. But after helping to destroy one form of oppression, modern industrial capitalism showed it had every interest in establishing another… and the main party of industrial capital, the Republican Party, soon forgot its slogans of the 1860s."
January 7, 2015 –
page 450
61.14% "By 1914, faith in the future was well on its way to replacing faith in God—although there were still many upholders of respectable opinion who tried to combine the two."
January 7, 2015 –
page 490
66.58% "Meanwhile, the millions of men at the various fronts were undergoing experiences for which nothing in life had prepared them. They soon discovered that the war was not a pleasant jaunt to Berlin or Paris, or some great adventure. It was mud, boredom, bad food and the horror of death all around them."
January 7, 2015 –
page 510
69.29% "Capitalist democracy had no chance of survival in the Russia of 1917, but that did not rule out a starving, despairing population allowing a right wing dictatorship to build on their despair. As Trotsky once observed, the fascism born in Italy in 1922 could easily have been born under another name in Russia in late 1917 or 1918."
January 7, 2015 –
page 540
73.37% "Eugen Leviné (to the court which sentenced him to death): ‘The Social Democrats start, then run away and betray us; the Independents fall for the bait, join us and then let us down, and we Communists are then stood up against the wall. We Communists are all dead men on leave’."
January 7, 2015 –
page 590
80.16% "The 1930s was a decade in which the forces of hope and despair fought on the streets of every city. It was a decade when revolution and counter-revolution were at each other’s throats. It ended in a victory for counter-revolution which plunged the world into another war, accompanied by barbarities which put even the slaughter of 1914-18 in the shade."
January 7, 2015 –
page 595
80.84% "For most people Communism in the 1930s was indistinguishable from the Soviet Union, and meant emulating its revolution elsewhere. Yet by the time of the Wall Street Crash there was virtually nothing of the revolution of 1917 left in Russia."
January 7, 2015 –
page 600
81.52% "The British Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb, lifelong opponents of revolution, visited Russia in the mid-1930s. They were so impressed that they wrote a book entitled The Soviet Union: A New Civilisation? By the second edition they were even more impressed, and removed the question mark."
January 8, 2015 –
page 605
82.2% "Like the Italian fascists, the Nazis were a party of the middle classes. A large proportion of their members before Hitler took power were self employed (17.3 percent), white collar employees (20.6 percent) or civil servants (6.5 percent). All of these groups were represented in the Nazi Party at rates between 50 and 80 percent higher than in the population as a whole."
January 8, 2015 –
page 630
85.6% "Churchill’s refusal to concede the principle of independence for India meant that in 1942, while the decisive Battle of Stalingrad was taking place, thousands of British-led troops were brutally crushing demonstrations in India instead of fighting the Nazis, and that an Indian ‘liberation army’ was formed to fight on the side of Japan. It also led to a famine which killed three million people in Bengal."
January 8, 2015 –
page 650
88.32% "The ‘failure’ of the League of Nations had not been accidental—it followed from an intrinsic fault. It was set up by the victorious powers after 1918 as part of the Treaty of Versailles by which they parcelled out the world among themselves. Lenin described it as a ‘thieves’ kitchen’—and, as the saying goes, ‘thieves fall out’."
January 8, 2015 –
page 670
91.03% "Many employers welcomed women workers as they could get away with paying them low wages. The labour market was still structured round the notion that a man’s income mattered more than a woman’s. But in creating conditions in which women would gain the confidence to challenge this set-up, it was also laying the ground for an unparalleled demand for women’s liberation, even if it could never satisfy that demand."
January 8, 2015 –
page 700
95.11% "Nineteenth century accounts of what capitalism does to working class communities, from Dickens and Engels onwards, are also accounts of polluted atmosphere, endemic diseases, overcrowding and adulterated food in slum life. But at a time when a maximum of ten million people worldwide were involved in industrial capitalist production, ecological devastation was a localised problem."
January 8, 2015 –
page 720
97.83% "The ruling classes of the world, like their predecessors for 5,000 years, will do their utmost to thwart these attempts and will, if necessary, unleash endless barbarities so as to hang on to what they regard as their sacred right to power and property. They will defend the existing capitalist order to the end—even if it is the end of organised human life."
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: history
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: history-europe
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: history-civilizations
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: history-everyday-life
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: history-imperial
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: history-modern
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: history-outline
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: history-theory
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: anarchism
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: about-crisis
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: democracy
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: epic-stuff
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: extra-creative
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: geo-politix
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: insti-crit
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: marx
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: often-cited
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: politics
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: pop-history
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: reference
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: religion
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: sociology-poverty
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: sociology-institutions
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: war
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: ww1
January 8, 2015 – Shelved as: ww2
January 8, 2015 – Finished Reading

Post a comment »
Comments Showing 1-2 of 2 (2 new)

dateDown arrow    newest »

message 1: by Nandakishore (new) - added it
Jan 08, 2015 01:35AM

Nandakishore Mridula How are you finding it?


message 2: by Riku (new) - rated it 4 stars
Jan 08, 2015 01:55AM

Riku Sayuj Nandakishore wrote: "How are you finding it?"

It is pretty good at what it sets out to do. A very different view of the historical landscape. Educational.


back to top