a little history of the world by ernst gombrich

After all, we say: 'They are old.' But they too had grandfathers and grandmothers, and they, too, could say: 'Once upon a time'. Your father and mother were also small once, and so was your grandfather, and your grandmother, a much longer time ago, but you know that too. You won't remember that, but you know it’s true. Do you remember? Your own history might begin like this: 'Once upon a time there was a small boy' - or a small girl - 'and that small boy was me.' But before that you were a baby in a cradle. Once you were so small that, even standing on tiptoes, you could barely reach your mother's hand. Read an excerpt from A Little History of the World:Īll stories begin with 'Once upon a time.' And that's just what this story is all about: what happened, once upon a time. She tells Liane Hansen more about her grandfather and his books.

Leonie Gombrich, granddaughter of the author, wrote an introduction to the new edition. This fall, the first English edition of the book was published by Yale University Press. Then, before Gombrich died in 2001 - at the age of 92 - he began to update and translate the original.

Yet for many years, Little History was not translated into English. The book tells the story of human kind from the stone age to the atomic bomb and has been translated into 17 languages.Ī more popular work for young people, The Story of Art, was published in 1950 and sold 6 million copies for the author. The late Sir Ernst Gombrich wrote A Little History of the World in 1936, in German. The product of a generous and humane sensibility, this timeless account makes intelligible the full span of human history.Sir Ernst Gombrich reads to his grandchildren, Carl and Leonie, in a 1972 photograph. This is a text dominated not by dates and facts, but by the sweep of mankind’s experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity’s achievements and an acute witness to its frailties. In between emerges a colorful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, and the spread and limitations of science. In forty concise chapters, Gombrich tells the story of man from the stone age to the atomic bomb. Superbly designed and freshly illustrated, this is a book to be savored and collected. A Little History of the World presents his lively and involving history to English-language readers for the first time. Toward the end of his long life, Gombrich embarked upon a revision and, at last, an English translation. Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser was published in Vienna to immediate success, and is now available in seventeen languages across the world. In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, the 26-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited by a publishing acquaintance to attempt a history of the world for younger readers.

A little history of the world by ernst gombrich