This is the type of book teenagers be should reading, and I wish I read it a lot sooner myself. It covers everything from the spread of agriculture thousands of years ago to ancient European civilizations — and not just Ancient Greece or Rome — to the Enlightenment to the Partitions of Poland to the end of the Cold War (I just restated the subtitle of the book in a longer statement). And since it’s such an immense and comprehensive tome, it opens up the entire history of Europe to the reader, allowing them to discover which events or periods they find most interesting. In that way, it acts as a catalyst for more focused reading.

At least that’s the effect it’s had on me. I have already started on a Dostoevsky binge, kicking off with a quick re-read of Notes From Underground. I’ll then move on to the big guns: Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. Maybe I’ll read The Idiot in between those two, to maintain chronological order to appease the OCD aspect of my brain. I also have quite a bit more motivation to read through The Battle: A New History of Waterloo and the Memoirs of Napoleon’s Egyptian Expedition, 1798-1801, two gifts I received from a history buff. Most of all, I want to get through yet another massive tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which was another gift; I’m just not ready to read another 1000+ page book any time soon.

Getting back to Norman Davies’s impressive achievement, I would just like to share these awesome two paragraphs (WARNING: SPOILERS!!):

The collapse of the Soviet Empire is certainly ‘the greatest, and perhaps the most awful event’ of recent times. The speed of its collapse has exceeded all the other great landslides of European history — the dismemberment of the Spanish dominions, the partitions of Poland, the retreat of the Ottomans, the disintegration of Austria-Hungary. Yet it is hardly an event which calls for the historian to sit on the ruins of the Kremlin, like Gibbon in the Colosseum, or to write a requiem. For the Soviet Union was not a civilization that was once great. It was uniquely mean and mendacious even in its brief hour of triumph. It brought death and misery to more human beings than any other on record. It brought no good life either to its dominant Russian nationality or even to its ruling elite. It was massively destructive, not least of Russian culture. As many thoughtful Russians now admit, it was folly that should never have built in the first place. The sovereign nations of the ex-Soviet Union are picking up the pieces where they left off in 1918-22, when their initial flicker of independence was snuffed out by Lenin’s Red Army. Almost everyone agrees: ‘Russia, yes. But what sort of Russia?’

The most obvious factor the Soviet collapse is that it happened through natural causes. The Soviet Union was not, like ancient Rome, invaded by barbarians or, like the Polish Commonwealth, partitioned by rapacious neighbors, or, like the Habsburg Empire, overwhelmed by the strains of a great war. It was not, like the Nazi Reich, defeated in a fight to the death. It died because it had to, because the grotesque organs of its internal structure were incapable of providing the essentials of life. In a nuclear age, it could not, like its tsarist predecessor, solve its internal problems by expansion. Nor could it suck more benefit from the nations whom it had captured. It could not tolerate the partnership with China which once promised a global future for communism; it could not stand the oxygen of reform; so it imploded. It was struck down by the political equivalent of a coronary, more massive than anything that history affords.

Now that’s some beautiful writing, Jeff Pearlman.

If you think Europeans became the dominant group in humanity because of superior genes, you’re an ignorant asshole. Eurasia — in case you didn’t realize, Europe and Asia are really one big landmass — had the advantages when it came to large domesticable animals and crops. Not to mention the proximity to the birthplace of humanity in Africa. You may think Africa would’ve become the center of human civilization since we originated there, but that continent’s animals don’t take kindly to domestication. And it’s pretty fucking hot there, if you didn’t notice. 

The orientation of continents also plays a role, as Eurasia spans mostly east-west, while the others span mostly north-south. Australia doesn’t count. They were still in the Stone Age when England decided to ship criminals there because farming wasn’t particularly advantageous compared to hunting. Even though I saw multiple hilarious pictures of Aborigines in Guns, Germs, and Steel, I still think of The Road Warrior when I hear Australia. I try to imagine cool shit like that occurs all the time in the middle of the continent, unbeknowst to the civilized people on the coasts. 

(You can stretch those last two paragraphs to about 200 pages.)

Even though Europe eventually became the center of civilization, for arguably a bigger portion of human history the Middle East has served as the hub for human advancement, as evidenced by the Babylon, Egypt (might as well be the MIddle East), Persia, and the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. The Middle East used to be the Fertile Crescent! But then the farming capabilities of the area were decimated by desertification to create the hell that many people now consider the Middle East to be. Dubai is trying to change that by going SimCity all over everyone’s ass, but we’ll see how that turns out. Their financial planner is probably popping up every 2 minutes to annoy the shit out of them. If it weren’t for the desertification, the Middle East could easily still be the dominant force in the world, with the rest of us resorting to terrorist attacks on them. And Israel would certainly not exist. The Middle East — in addition to its head start in terms of native crops and animals — has central location in between Europe, Asia, and Africa, creating a whirlwind of cultural diffusion. And we all learned in school how cool and helpful cultural diffusion is! If only they knew of the growing menace that is anime…

And oh yeah, China was always so isolated because of geography. Actually, that’s just the whole book in a nutshell. GEOGRAPHY. Maybe already knowing my geography fairly well diminished the amount of satisfaction I could’ve possibly garnered from this book. Ok, so there was actually some discussion of social evolution in terms of different sizes of human groups, but I just did not find it all that enthralling. If you’re into reading about how a tribe handles growing from 5,000 to 20,000, maybe this is the book for you. I rather just read my 322nd science-fiction story in a row. More Philip K. Dick here I come!

Oh wait, I need to study financial mathematics instead.