Very broad history of the world, emphasizing human connectedness across cultures. Well done although in a book like this there almost always seems like too much detail - even though you know every tidbit of detail could be (and probably is) a book of its own. ( )

Another entry into my Read Your Library series, continuing in the World History section of the library, this particular book takes a look at the spread of humanity throughout the course of history, picturing it like a series of webs that form and grow, eventually connecting or being overtaken by other, stronger webs.

Starting with the earliest forms of gathered humanity, the McNeills trace the growth and expansion of the human race from the early hunter-gatherer societies, to the shift to agrarian tribes, to the formation of the first major civilization in Mesopotamia. From there they explain the rise and fall of the first empires, the spread of technology, food, and illness across the globe, and the eventual combination of various webs to form a vast, interconnected web that covers most of the globe.

One thing I enjoyed about this book, as it is designed as a textbook, is that the information is presented in the barest factual form. The authors try to avoid their own bias and simply present the history as it happened, giving a full account of why things happened the way they did, never taking sides on a single issue.

I will say this fully factual presentation did make the reading a bit dry on occasion, but again, being a textbook that aspect was expected. I did not account for how much time that meant it would take me to get through it, however. ( )

Did not read very far into this. It contains much the same information I have read in other books. Seems well presented, but no need to repeat.

Awful would be the one word I would use to describe this book. Painful would be the one word I would use to describe the experience of reading this book. There's really not too much more I can say. Of course it was extremely important... It was a textbook. I was truly upset to have this book assigned to me as a summer reading assignment. Why not just make me read the textbook? This book was so filled to the brim with facts and histories that on a scale of 1 to 10 of how interested I was, 10 being so unbelievably interested, I would probably be within the range of 0 to -5. I made constant attempts to choke the information down my throat page by page, page by page. Initially my goals were to read a chapter in one sitting. This quickly changed to 10 pages in a sitting, which quickly changed to 7, to 5, and so on until I found myself almost unable to read it at all. Now, some might say, first and foremost the McNeill's, that the point of the book was not to be interesting. Well, if given the opportunity to refute this point to them, I would probably say that a little bit of interest may have given me the ability to actually take in some of the information. From words to sentences to paragraphs to pages, all the book gave was events, people, and cold facts. There was nothing remotely enjoyable, so none of the information stuck. The only reason I gave it half a star is that I didn't know how to make it clear that I'd given it a 0... I have never learned less from a book in my life, and I hope that the McNeill's look at random review on book websites so they can take in what I have written here. ( )

I was required to read this book for my ap world history class, and I have to admit it is more dry and tedious than our textbook was. The McNeill brothers do a great job of researching and compiling information about world history, however at times I like they were just droning on about some event that happened years ago. They fail to create an engaging and appealing book. In my opinion, history has the capability of being very interesting, one can get lost in a story about a great ruler or battle. However, The Human Web is so monotonous that one could fall asleep reading it (I did). To be honest, I do not think that even a quarter of the students in my class actually read the book in its entirety. This book has so much potential, because the authors came up with the ingeneous idea that all aspects of world history are connected. Every development, between every society, is some how connected over time, hence the title The Human Web, These webs can be organized into several sub categories including technological webs, religious webs, territorial webs etc...

If you are looking for a boring read, this is it. I am not surprised that I am the first person to write a review on this book, the only people who would ever need to read it would be historians, or individuals researching information. In my opinion the McNeill's book should not even be classified as a book at all. ( )

Surprisingly devoid of revelations. Gospel of free trade.