![]() ![]() He decries the exploitation of women in "Africa, India and the Middle East" seeming to give the rest of Asia a bye. ![]() He credits Pasteur for the invention of vaccines, even though they'd been used for a hundred years before. He declares that tea and coffee consumption explained the seventeenth century world's increasing demand for sugar. He uses undefined colloquialisms-"pole position" and "laissez-faire". Inserted quotes, like one by Voltaire, often did little to illuminate the topic. On the negative, Lascelles wasted space on pre-history, confused facts, and accentuated minor facts while ignoring major ones. Words like "unfortunately", "inevitable" and "needlessly" betray his approach. Also, his writing is readable, if opinionated, even sarcastic. Lascelles correctly focused more space on recent history as that tends to be neglected in public schools and imperfectly understood by the populous. An interesting concept-condensing human history into 150 pages of readable prose-but unevenly executed. ![]()
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