A First Look at Simon Sebag Montefiore's The World

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In 2019 noted historian Simon Sebag Montefiore embarked on the most ambitious project of his career. Below, an excerpt from the preface to The World: A Family History of Humanity, which Knopf will publish in May.

“This book has given me the greatest satisfaction of my writing life, and presented the most daunting challenge. But I have suffered much less than many other historians. Ibn Khaldun saw both his parents perish of the plague. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote his History of the World while waiting to be executed, a condition that surely fostered the required perspective. But he was beheaded before finishing (an unbearable thought). History has a special, almost mystic power to shape (and, if abused, to distort) the present: That’s what makes history-writing an essential and noble—but dangerous—profession. Sima Qian, the Chinese world historian (born circa 145 BC), was accused of defaming the emperor and given a choice between execution and becoming a palace eunuch. He opted for castration so that he could complete his history: ‘Before I had finished my rough manuscript, I met with this calamity… If it may be handed down to men who will appreciate it, and penetrate to the villages and great cities, then though I should suffer a thousand mutilations, what regret should I have?’ Every historian, every writer shares that dream. Sima Qian was in my thoughts as I wrote…”

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