3.5 stars!
Okay, I'll start by saying that I think this book mostly does exactly what it sets out to do, and I logically know that a short book about the history of the world can't be comprehensive - it would be impossible. That said, I largely enjoyed this and thought it was interesting. It does cover a very broad range of time and space in a very concise manner. The way my brain works, it's a little bit hard to process that much information when the sections are so brief, but the information is certainly in the book and communicated well!
On the other hand, by the end I was feeling a bit of fatigue due to the fact that most of the content is about violent conflict, warfare, annexation, colonialism, etc. And I do understand that war has irrevocably shaped the way the world looks during every era of history, but I wish that a little bit more page time had been dedicated to learning more about the art, architecture, culture, religion etc. for a lot of these countries or empires while they existed, instead of just focusing on their expansion and inevitable downfall through warfare. I guess I need to pick a few of these geographical areas and/or time periods and pick up longer books about them! The other thing that I consider an oversight is the lack of any meaningful section on people who were Indigenous to North America, aside from briefly mentioning them when Europeans started colonizing the continent. I would really have liked to learn more about pre-colonial America, and will likely look for a book that deals more with that topic.