The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History

Why did the first civilizations emerge when and where they did? How did Islam become a unifying force in the world of its birth? What enabled the West to project its goods and power around the world from the fifteenth century on? Why was agriculture invented seven times and the Internet just once?

In a spirited contribution to the quickening discussion of world-historical questions such as these, J. R. and William H. McNeill explore the webs that have drawn humans together in patterns of interaction and exchange, cooperation and competition, since the beginning. Whether small or large, loose or dense, these webs have provided the medium for the movement of ideas, goods, power, and money within and across cultures, societies, and nations. Avoiding any determinism, environmental or cultural, the McNeills give us a synthesizing picture of the big patterns of world history in a rich, open-ended, concise account. Maps, 25 b/w illustrations.

People who rightly were thrilled by Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" should go on and enjoy this rare treat: lucid and easy to understand, based on a wealth of erudition connected with plain sense, a new vision.

Young readers might get ideas about a change of courses. As a university professor I immediately took this book up as reading matter for my students - mostly engineers and lawyers at present.


Great Overall View of History   June 12, 2003
John D. Cofield
31 out of 36 found this review helpful

The Human Web is an excellent summary of human history. It is indeed a bird's eye view in that it looks at the broad overall sweep of human affairs and doesn't bog down in unnecessary detail. The major theme is the construction and expansion of human webs, or interconnections that tie cultures and civilizations together ever more tightly. If space voyagers ever arrived on Earth (and could read a human language) this book would be one of the first things I hope we hand them to help them understand us.


A refreshing and exceptional overview of world history   August 25, 2009
Tammi Lauri (Helsinki, Finland)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

If you need to try to survive from our history by reading only one book, here's one of the better, perhaps even the best, alternative. I'm a student of history myself, and I can only say that, due to my experience, it's very difficult to beat J.R. and William McNeill. The task of creating a general view from the whole world history is very difficult, but the McNeills have managed extremely well and written this very readable and colorful analysis of our history. This is a rare success book with challenging thoughts not just for students and advanced historians, but also for any literate blue-collar lad, waitress or "hockey-mom".

When Human Web was translated into Finnish (in 2005), immediately four main history and social science departments took it as their entrance examinations book. And not just the schools of history in Turku and Tampere and the subject of social and economical history in Helsinki, but also the Finland's most respected school for world politics in Helsinki had it as their main entrance examination book - and most of them still have.

Human Web is a book written with an impressing academical knowledge on a very clear and readable way avoiding any frustrating jargon. All this makes it a very pleasant, refreshing and exceptional reading experience for anyone.


The Aftermath of Columbus   June 10, 2009
Edward G. Simmons (Atlanta, GA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

The McNeills, father and son historians, have given us a superb history of the course of human civilization that is richly detailed in its survey of world cultures while living up to its billing as a "bird's-eye view." The dominant theme in this history is the emergence of webs binding societies together through transportation, communication, economics, politics, and interaction with the environment. Prior to 1450 the emphasis is on how cultures developed in every part of the world and the emergence of the "Old World Web" of cultural interactions in Eurasia and northern parts of Africa. After Columbus, the thesis is that the cultural webs began to merge into a single World Wide Web which characterizes life especially since 1870. The role of Columbus was central, for his "voyage stands as the most crucial step in undoing that ignorance and isolation, in fusing the world's webs into a single, global one, the most important process in modern history." (p. 163)

Except for the period 1914-1945, globalization has reigned supreme, they say. They present this as fraught with danger as well as offering great promise. The global economy has increased the divide between the haves and have-nots, they point out. Contemporary life is also characterized by upheaval, they say. "With the creation of a single web, it is as if history speeded up. Innovations and inventions, booms and depressions, pests and plagues rippled through a unified system .... So, as human history grew more unified, it grew more unstable and chaotic than ever, a condition with which we still live." (p. 178)

Two paramount emphases for recent times are the scientific and economic booms that have been going on since 1945 and human impact on ecology. The factor with the greatest potential impact for the future of humanity is the fact that, "in the process of trying to feed ourselves, make money, and protect ourselves from our fellows, we recast the biosphere dramatically, inserting ourselves as the main force shaping biological evolution." (286) They point out that the planet has seen five previous "extinction spasms" and that the twentieth century appears to be the start of a sixth, this one caused entirely by humanity. (p. 286) They conclude soberly: "It may one day appear that this ecological tumult, particularly climate change and the reduction in biodiversity, was the most important development in the period after 1890, more so than ideological struggles or world wars." (p. 288)

Highly researched and well written, this history is recommended for its scope and insight. This work put the past and present in a perspective that makes sense in our pluralistic yet increasingly global world.



The best short history I ever read   August 29, 2009
Allan Lindh (Santa Cruz, CA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I'm a William McNeil fan, but was stunned by how good this book was. Teaming with his Ecologically oriented historian son they have produced a short history of humankind so clear and transparent, and intelligent, that you end up sorry you didn't get to read it first, before you read all the histories overloaded with details. Having noticed that all of human society and civilization consists of dynamic webs of information and material flow, they write a history of the last 100 thousand years from that perspective -- political boundaries hardly figure, just people exchanging information and material in ever more complex webs. The current "World Wide Web" is then just the latest step in improved information flow. Buy one for yourself, your friends, your kids, high school seniors, etc. Human history is slightly clearer when you finish this book.