Perspective

This book is written mostly in the third person, with occasional breaks in the first person as the authors speak their own opinions. This third person viewpoint allows the illusion that the author is giving simple facts of world history, and helps to keep the storyline flowing. However, as the author himself admits, any person telling of world history in a small space has to exhibit some form of bias and prejudice even to fit the information in. The author chooses specific instances in history to discuss that he feels are vital to the story of the world. Others, however, may not agree with those choices as definitive moments in history, since such a perspective is extremely relative. In addition, the author shows an extreme bias against most religious movements in history, which lead to a slightly skewed notion of historical events. Van Loon's background as a historian...