Each essay is accompanied by a detailed time line of dates and events, and the flavour of the period concerned is brought to life by selected contemporary quotations from figures as diverse as Aristotle, Saladin, Christopher Columbus, Suleiman the Magnificent, Galileo, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, Mary Wollstonecraft, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. In addition, box features throw light on a range of related topics, from Confucianism and the state to Alexander the Great's horse, and from Islamic science to the Enigma code and the atomic bomb.
Ian Crofton, formerly editor-in-chief of The Guinness Encyclopedia, has written a number of works of popular narrative history, from Great Escapes and A Curious History of Food and Drink to The Little Book of Big History and World History: 50 Events You Really Need to Know. The last two bestsellers have been translated into many languages. Crofton has also explored the interplay of landscape, history and nature in more personal books such as Walking the Border: A Journey between Scotland and England ('Excellent', The Guardian), Fringed with Mud and Pearls: An English Island Odyssey (selected by The Telegraph as one of their top twenty travel books of 2021) and, most recently, Upland: A Journey through Time and the Hills ('A beautifully written celebration of a lifelong passion', Stephen Venables, author and mountaineer).