The Infographic History of the World

by Valentina D'Efilippo, James Ball

Library Journal Best Reference 2014 "The authors have put as much effort into the design as the data and their book is meant to entertain as much as to inform."
-- The Economist The first edition of The Infographic History of the World was released only in 2013 but the world clearly has changed since then. The movement of millions of people around the globe, including the mass exodus of four million Syrian refugees, has altered almost every country on the globe. At least 15 major conflicts erupted in 2014, resulting in the displacement of millions of individuals on virtually every continent. By year's end, a staggering 59.5 million people had been forced to flee as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations. Globally, one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum. If this were the population of a country, it would be the world's 24th biggest. Climate change is also forcing migration. Since 2008, close to 175 million people living in developing countries have been displaced by geophysical or weather-related disasters. This edition of The Infographic History of the World is updated to reflect this profound change in the human fabric. New infographics lay out the numbers and geographic movement of refugees, migrants and displaced peoples around the globe, showing where they originate and where they land. Seventy-five topics and more than 100 infographics cover the entirety of the world's lifespan of 13.8 billion years. Four sections -- In the Beginning, Getting Civilized, Nation Building, and The Modern World -- present world history as a visual essay of facts, trends and timelines. The book's design cleverly mirrors the content, opening with parchment-like paper stock and primitive typography, progressing to glossy pages, minimalist design and color.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Design, Reference, Art, Humor

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 20, 2013

Reviews

[Sud666 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very cool book. It is the history of the world as told in infographics. Using the power of graphs and charts all stylized to represent forms is an expression of history that I have not often run across.
Full of funny and interesting information-it is a joy to read and see. Everything from the development of the earth, the cosmos, humanity itself, the rise of civilization, etc.

All of it is here and broken into very interesting sections and the author has funny non-technical descriptions of various complicated things. From which Empire is biggest, when did everything evolve, which languages are related to which, what's been invinted and when...these are just a few of the topics in this wonderful book. My only complaint is that I wished it were a bigger book. Well done and a great idea!

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

The objectives of D'Efilippo and Ball in writing The Infographic History of the World were to use advanced techniques of graphical data to succinctly summarise and present the entire history of the world. Just a tad ambitious.

The book is certainly a graphical feast, but I think in the end it becomes self-defeating. Towards the end I just wanted to scan the text to pick up the cogent facts and move on; not at all what the authors had in mind, I'm sure. The complexity of some of the diagrams is bewildering and sometimes far too much information is included, at the expense of clarity. It seemed to me also that the authors often chose what they thought would be a cool graphical shape for the subject under discussion and then shoe-horned their data to conform to that shape. In my view the best graphical design uses the form that best represents the data, not the other way round.

I also wished for a somewhat less glib and smart-arse commentary. I feel that the authors were conflicted over their need to inform and the need to entertain but, to be true to their objective, they should have erred on the side of information, which they do not do. The book is also far too UK-centric; the frequent use of "we" to refer to the UK seems somewhat out of place in a supposed history of the world.

Still there is some very interesting information here, and some of the graphical devices used are excellent. I think overall this is not a book to read cover-to-cover, but rather something to dip into occasionally for a bit of arcane trivia and some idle amusement.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some reviewers are criticising this book for not being enlightening.
I believe the authors wanted to present the data in interesting ways and crunch the numbers in order to leave readers to draw their own conclusions. Yes, the commentary is not strictly academic, but that makes this coffee table read enjoyable and fun. Boo, hiss to the haters.

[Virginprune · Rating 1 out of 5]

A very big disappointment. I'd bought the book on the strength of good reviews, but honestly the best thing about it is that it feels nice, like a coffee table ornament.

... and one of the best clues to a coffee table book is when the publishers / authors tell you that you don't need to start at the beginning, but can dip in anywhere - fine perhaps for an album of landscape photos, but the authors are referring to a book they call a "History" - which, if not linear, certainly has progression. I staunchly read the thing from front to back, and I can assure you, they're right - you really don't need to.

So, where to start?
- graphics - I had expected this to be the highlight. I was keen to see mastery of graphical representation of data; I hope to be amazed by the originality and creativity. Sadly, no. Many graphics are unreadable due to ridiculous fonts or colour combinations; others are severely compromised in their fluidity by the same. Sometimes the artistic "idea" so overwhelms the communication that you've no idea what the page is supposed to be telling you - even when you (as they suggest) read the side text first. Such a shame - I was hoping to be wowed, but to be honest, the best graphics were not their own.
- text - the real low point. Utterly puerile, stuffed with sad, embarrassing half-jokes and clichés. There are glaring factual errors ("trillion - that's a thousand million") and all too often the analysis of the information (nay, data) at hand is facile and unilluminating. (The treatment of unemployment trends, for example, simply tells you what's on the charts and then draws sweepingly crass conclusions without, say, making a mention of changes in the participation rate, a major factor in these trends.)
- content - to cap it all, a large amount of this is well-worn subject matter, rarely treated differently from pre-existing studies. Admittedly, there's not much quantifiable information available from ancient history, but even there I've seen much more inventive analysis and insightful choice of data and treatment elsewhere.

All told, if anyone would get anything out of the contents of this book, it might be a pre-teen (preferably with a critical eye as to how they'd do it better). Perhaps in a decade or two, people will drag this book out and laugh at its incompetence. Until then, hmm... estate agents and a certain type of pub might find it useful for stacking shelves of books that are not meant to be read.
Sorry, this review is posted a little too late for xmas!

[Daniel Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book. Do you know how long a Light Year is?

Imagine flying all the way around the world, approximately 40,000 km. Now imagine repeating this 80 times over. That's a pretty long way, right? Now imagine repeating this feat every single day for 8,079 years. At the end of that time you'll have travelled one light year!

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love data and if you love graphs, then this is the book for you! I do love these things so I found this so enjoyable! It's very England centric as a heads up, and if you're looking for a lot of Canadian data, it isn't there.

Very fun to read!

[Kiera Beddes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating, albeit slightly, depressing reading. The history of the world boiled down to a (relatively) few images.

[Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this a lot up until the last section (modern world).

[Esther · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a definite emphasis on the UK in this book. It sounds like a book about the world, but there were several pages that just covered statistics of the UK like what drugs people have tried, which books are bestsellers, and the changing ethnicity of the region. I just felt like the title was a bit misleading and those pages should have reflected global numbers instead.

The writing voice was also a little weird and I wish the authors hadn't tried to be funny because it didn't really work.

[Sarah - All The Book Blog Names Are Taken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting way to visually represent the history of our world. Easy read, as naturally the graphics are the focal point. I especially found the representations of the wars and soldiers killed interesting, as we in the western world have been trained for years to think of WWI and WWII as the deadliest in human history.

This would be a great way to help students, perhaps middle school age and up, understand some of these huge concepts - such as how big the universe really is.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great Christmas gift this would make! Often when books are very visual I scan the photos or art and skip the text, but this text is so well-written and funny, I am reading front cover to back.

[Shallowreader VaVeros · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed dipping in and out of this history book. Infographics demonstrating different periods of world history and often, through the use of graphics, comparing modern times with ancient times through graphical representation of statistics. Highly rec!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a whole, I really liked "The Infographic History of the World". Its key strength was how it organized its coverage over time. It was divided into four sections, each about twice as long as the last. These four sections cover pre-human history, early human and proto-human history to the iron age, history to roughly the past one-hundred years, and roughly contemporary trends. The book followed a different visual motif for each of these periods, providing a clear sense of development. Particularly in this last section, there was good coverage of a variety of natural, infrastructural, demographics, social, and cultural topics.

This infographic history was not perfect. Occasionally it was too cutesy, surrendering a clearer representation of what was happening in favor of riffing on the subject the graphic was supposed to be about. I found its humor occassionally grating and not always in good taste. On the other hand, the range of coverage over time and subject matter, and the sheer diversity of graphics attempted as part of that, means that you're going to get a few misses.

Though the book has a slight focus on the United Kingdom (presumably its intended audience), there was very little that wouldn't also be of interest to an American audience.

Now, this isn't my favorite work of deep history visualization; that honor belongs to "The Big History Timeline Wallbook: Unfold the History of the Universe--From the Big Bang to the Present Day!" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). However, it is worthwhile in its own right.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5/5

Certaines pages de ce livre m'ont émerveillée, d'autres m'ont franchement confuse. L'objectif avoué de l'ouvrage est de représenter certains événements ou périodes de l'histoire sous une forme graphique. Sur ce point, très bien, on est loin des livres d'histoire barbants qui alignent des séries de dates et de chiffres de manière indigeste. Mais, le problème est que certaines de ces infographies sont trop complexes. A vouloir trop en faire, on obtient une parfaite illustration de l'adage qui veut que "le mieux est l'ennemi du bien". J'ai parfois passé un temps fou à tenter de comprendre un graphique, et j'ai même survolé certains d'entre eux car ils étaient bien trop complexes. De plus, parfois il y a quelques petites coquilles qui se glissent dans ces infographies. Pas dramatique, mais c'est toujours un peu décevant quand on ouvre un livre et qu'on y trouve des fautes. Il est vrai aussi que le ton des textes prête parfois à sourire, mais se révèle un peu cucul la praline par moments. Néanmoins, les textes offrent une bonne synthèse de l'infographie et se révèlent parfois indispensables lorsque ladite infographie est obscure.
Au final, j'ai quand même appris beaucoup de choses et certaines pages sont vraiment sublimes, bien faites ou très illustratives. A conseiller pour quelqu'un qui aimerait étendre quelque peu sa culture historique tout en se divertissant et pour ceux qui adorent les chiffres et les données.

[B. Zucker · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book changed my opinion on infographics. I used to like infographics. Now I realize I only like *good* infographics. So many of the graphics in this book obscure, rather than clarify, their subject. In many cases, a simple pie chart, bar graph, scaled timeline, or even a table of numbers would be much easier to understand than what this book presents.

This book does have some pretty colors, after the first 40 pages, which are in black and white. It also has some semi-witty commentary and a few fun facts, if you are patient enough to decipher the hieroglyphics. (This is not a metaphor; the artist literally uses Egyptian hieroglyphics to represent numbers in one graphic. And I thought the Roman numerals were bad.)

This is not a good book for learning new things. It is good for promoting eyestrain and forehead creases. Suggested uses include waiting-room material for optometrists and cosmetic surgeons.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted something outside my normal scope of reading material, and this definitely qualified. It was rather entertaining and creative. Definitely some of the infographics worked better than others, but some of them were quite good. It felt like it took a long time to get through the speculative "ancient earth and early man" sections: that covers like half of the book and since so much of it is guesswork I was not very interested in that. Guesstimates plucked out of thin air don't lend themselves very well to statistics-focused charts and diagrams. When it got to medieval and modern times it was much more interesting. It is UK-based, which felt a little odd, and a bit dated since it was published several years ago. Some complaints, but for what it was, I liked the book, especially the second half.

[Charity U · Rating 4 out of 5]

Calling all my non-fiction loving friends! Do you occasionally get side-tracked on Pinterest or in articles by infographics? Do you love their clean clear presentation of information? If you answered "yes" to either of those questions, you need to get your hands on this book. Once you pick it up, it's impossible to put down - and each page is so packed with information that one can spend immense amounts of time on them with ease. You'll learn something new with every perusal. My only gripe would be regarding how many pages are devoted to evolutionary "history." However, the pages on the Crusades; war death rates; most popular books of all time; and technology all rank among my favorites. Highly recommended for the intellectual reader. This book will be enjoyed by any who want to know a fun fact or two.

[Kevin Morillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like this book really wraps up the essence of me.

Just the concept is really exciting, and even though it's not very specific as itself states from the very beginning it is alas a great tool to feel you with the curiosity to do your own research and further explore any of the ideas that are shown in it.

It took quite some time to me to finish reading this book even though it's actually very short and it has little text.

But I'm sure that's because every illustration or infographic has so much information condensed in such a small space that you could very well spend an hour just looking at one of them and get into compare and to deeply understand how things are statistically, or actually where since this book was released in 2010.

Even though this book is probably outdated and it's from UK standpoint because it's information is objective (unlike the jokes) it's no problem at all.

I don't think this will be any close to a favorite book for me but it's definitely one that I want to keep with me the rest of my days and I will probably look back to it every now and then.

[Nelson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very biased book! This infographic history book has an extremely obvious left-wing political slant. I don't get involved in political issues - but it's pretty obvious there's an agenda in this book. There's also a snarkyness toward religious belief. This isn't particularly surprising as James Ball works at the Guardian so you know he's not objective (which is further confirmed when you browse his articles!). It's hard to say this book presents data objectively. A few infographics were kind of interesting but overall it was pretty bad. Do not recommend.

[Nico Janow · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was surprisingly hard to stop reading once I got started. However, the authors went a bit too far in trying to be cute or artistic with the display of information, getting in the way of getting the information across. Several infographics, such as the one for art in the form of Mona Lisa, I didn't even bother making the effort to figure out. I think some of those would be good examples of bad infographics. I would have preferred more interesting facts, less 'showing off their artistic skills'.

[spike marlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting and its approach to history and human geography is both fascinating and unique. If you are a person who likes graphs and maps and information presented other then the written word this book is for you. It is definitely a book that you need to take in small chunks, for despite trying to render teams of data into simple graphics there is still a lot of information to look at.

[Anton Iokov · Rating 2 out of 5]

An outstanding book on how not to do data visualization.

Pretty pictures that either make no sense or are almost impossible to decode. Color encoding with shades of red, arbitrary axis, size represented as a bunch of icons and much more. Almost every chart in this book have a legend and is useless without it.

Somebody should make a dataviz course redesigning this 100+ charts.

P.S. You won't learn much history from the book too.

[Jim Jawitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good idea but they seemed to have just quickly made graphics to populate their idea, rather than presenting a collection of impressive graphics. Thus many are pedestrian illustrations of basic information. Basic data does not need sophisticated graphics and there are few graphics here that succeed in showing something complex in a simple way.

[Kristina Moses · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved the entertaining writing style of the book. The infographics were beautiful too and I loved how the style of each was related to what the graphic was about (like bicycle wheels for Olympic medals). My one complaint was that the info on some of the graphics is too tiny to see in detail. You can only get an overview of the data.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

100+ clever ways to present sometimes highly complex data. Edward Tufte would highly approve. Of course, not all data presented is of equal importance or relevance. Nevertheless, a beautifully presented book, edited with a keen eye for detail and a love for statistics.

[Tuomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

inspiring. history until 1900 brilliant. "modern times" did not keep up the brilliance, but still was inspiring

[Lucy Green · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as interesting as I was hoping, but still beautiful graphics.

[Mamdid · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Suzann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t think good infographics require so much accompanying text to help you figure out what is going on in the graphic.

[Artem Huletski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Картинки интересные, но не обязательные какие-то. Для тех, кто плохо запоминает цифры.