by Neil MacGregor

• Product code: cmc44134
• ISBN: 9781846144134
• Number of pages: 656
• Size: 234 x 153 mm
• llustrations: 250 plus
• Weight: 1kg

Book Description:

Discover the epic history of humanity in this re-released hardback edition.

Neil MacGregor, British Museum Director and author of A History of the World in 100 Objects, explores over two million years through 100 manmade objects, all from the British Museum's collection.

In this book, we travel back in time and across the globe, to see how we humans have shaped our world and been shaped by it over time. The story is told exclusively through the things that humans have made - all sorts of things, carefully designed and then either admired and preserved or used, broken and thrown away.

This book takes a dramatically original approach to the history of humanity, by using these objects as prisms through which we can explore past worlds. For example: how an early Victorian tea-set tells us about the impact of empire.

The book's range is enormous. It begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with an object from the 21st century which represents the world we live in today.

Seen through this lens, history is a kaleidoscope - shifting, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined.

This bestseller is an intellectual and visual feast.

Neil MacGregor:

Neil MacGregor has been Director of the British Museum since August 2002 and has devoted particular attention to developing the Museum’s regional and international partnerships. Neil read French and German at New College, Oxford, and studied philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He took an LLB in Law at the University of Edinburgh and was called to the Scottish Bar. He then decided to study 17th- and 19th-century art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and for six years was a lecturer in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Reading and a part-time lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 1981 he became Editor of the arts periodical, The Burlington Magazine, and then in 1987 became Director of the National Gallery.

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