A World History

McNeil is an old-fashioned narrative historian whose most famous book is Rise of the West. This book adopts a similar broad approach to world history. It makes an excellent gift for college students and young adult who want to lay a base for historical understanding.

I've been trying to read a survey of World History for years, but found most of the commonly available titles too dry and slow to get trough. McNeill did an admirable job of combining the history of eastern and western civilizations chronologically, and I can say that it's a great place to start if you're looking for an overview. Of course, it's light on many subjects as is necessary due to its size, and yes it's somewhat dated. However, I don't think you'll find a more readable survey.

Organization of the book is good especially on the flow of history. However, many things are not clearly explained and kind of skip over it. For important events too shallow, not much detailed, but did cover lots of stuff so people can later google or wikipedia on the info or read others books. In short a good starter book.