The Super Summary of World History Revised:With A Strong Emphasis On Western European And American History: With A Strong Emphasis On Western European And American History

by Alan Dale Daniel

The Super Summary of World History is a very compact history of the world emphasizing western culture and political processes. The Super Summary is for the thinking person. This new history raises exciting questions and puts events into new perspectives to stimulate real thinking about history rather than accepting that the past as set in stone. History isn’t just names and dates, but a range of decisions and actions that often turn on the smallest circumstance. The Super Summary analyzes a few events in depth but most are put into their historical framework so the reader discern where and how all of this action escorts us to the present day. If history seems dull, pick up The Super Summary to discover that Western History is alive with controversy and consequence.

Genres: History, Ebooks, Nonfiction, The World, Westerns

732 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 20, 2008

Reviews

[Garrett · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had difficulties getting through this book but pure determination got me through it. This is a 'summary' history with heavy emphasis on Western civilization and 20th century (especialy WWII). None of that is a bad thing and the author is clear in the introduction about what he will talk about and in what detail.

Nevertheless, he tends to contradict himself throughout the entire book. Oftentimes, he will make a statement and then a few paragraphs later either repeat it or completely contradict what he just said. (Rather annoying to say the least.)

I would think an editor would have caught these mistakes. I would have more sympathy given that the author is an amatuer historian except for two facts 1) the book is so dang long and 2) he references Wikipedia.

Finally, the author draws conclusions about what a person can learn from historical events. But the ideas and lessons he comes up with tend to be trite and moralistic. Seeing as there are hundreds if not thousands of better histories to read, I recommend people to pass on this volume.

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very much a No Thanks on this one.

Within a few pages I saw two "jokes" (I am assuming they must be jokes but to be honest, after some more skimming of the book I become less sure) about women getting the right to vote and whether it was "the right thing to do." The first part of the book is a timeline/list of "important events of world history." Both parts that mention women getting the vote--in New Zealand first, then the US and France-- are followed with a "Why?" Maybe he thinks he's being funny, but when 95% of the events aren't followed by such pithy "witticisms," it feels pretty bad and gross as a woman trying to learn more about and enjoy some history.

Also, he completely omits the Holocaust. Kind of a big deal, even from an American writer's point of view.

All of this combined with the above, plus him putting the "laws" of physics in quotes every time they are mentioned in the timelines, made me doubt the narrator enough to decide to shelve this one for now and find someone who didn't have baseless condescension for huge groups of people seeping through his work. Said narrator also doesn't have much study of history to back up his writing of a book, so I ended up passing on this one and moving on to different books on the subject.

Fun stuff: He also likes to go through his reviews on amazon and replying with things like how minorities etc have "asked for enough", including calling LGBT folks "sodomites" so uh. Have fun with that.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading this book one would think that half of human history has occurred since 1914. Up to then and even after I got what I wanted as advertised by the book's title. However, this book was written from a libertarian, conservative, and Western viewpoint so there are no doubt other ways of looking at the material. At times it was hard to stomach the author's take on events.

For an example of government incompetence and thus how it needs to be made smaller, etc. this American author stretched all the way to Bande Ache Tsunami to get his example. I was most surprised that he did not use the much closer to home and to my mind more relevant example of the government response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. I can only surmise that he deliberately did not do so because it would reflect badly upon what I infer to be his party. So I came to regard his view of the time since 1950 or so as propaganda. To be fair though, the author did make that point himself, in that one should not consider the current take on recent events to be the future history.

[Andy Liszewski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book to brush up on some history with the caveat that the author's perspective is limited. He concedes biases at every stage, leaving it up to the reader to decide what to internalize. At the end of every section there is a "What can we learn?," section which is usually pretty interesting, albeit still limited. You will enjoy this if you: take his warning about his own biases seriously, accept that he is not an artist so his pseudo-insights into art, philosophy and post-modernism in general are offensive if not ignored, and if you have no problem with the occasional typo.

OVERALL: I still feel I gained a lot by reading this and would recommend reading it, keeping in mind the conditions above.

[J.T. · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, I liked the way that the author presented his ideas. He presented some good arguments.
What I did not like was that he focused on some parts of history that did not have as much effect on world history. For example: the civil war??

I do think he deserves more credit than he is getting here.

[Michael Clark · Rating 1 out of 5]

The one thing that I enjoyed about this book was how the author compared the art of each era to events of the era.