The origin of kingship -- The earliest story -- The rise of aristocracy -- The creation of empire -- The age of iron -- The philosopher king -- The first written records -- The first war chronicles -- The first civil war -- The first epic hero -- The first victory over death -- The first reformer -- The first military dictator -- The first planned cities -- The first collapse of empire -- The first barbarian invasions -- The first monotheist -- The first environmental disaster -- The battle for reunification -- The Mesopotamian mixing bowl -- The overthrow of the Xia -- Hammurabi's empire -- The Hyksos seize Egypt -- King Minos of Crete -- The Harappan disintegration -- The rise of the Hittites -- Ahmose expels the Hyksos -- Usurpation and revenge -- The three-way contest -- The shifting capitals of the Shang -- The Mycenaeans of Greece -- Struggle of the gods -- Wars and marriages -- The greatest battle in very ancient times -- The battle for Troy -- The first historical king of China -- The Rig Veda -- The wheel turns again -- The end of the new kingdom -- The dark age of Greece -- The dark age of Mesopotamia -- The fall of the Shang --

The mandate of heaven

The Bharata war

The son of David

From western to eastern Zhou

The Assyrian renaissance

New peoples

Trading posts and colonies

Old enemies

Kings of Assyria and Babylon

Spectacular defeat

The decline of the king

The Assyrians in Egypt

Medes and Persians

Conquest and tyranny

The beginnings and end of empire

A brief empire

Cyrus the great

The republic of Rome

Kingdoms and reformers

The power of duty and the art of war

The spreading Persian empire

The Persian wars

The Peloponnesian wars

The first sack of Rome

The rise of the Ch'in

The Macedonian conquerors

Rome tightens its grasp

Alexander and the wars of the successors

The Mauryan epiphany

First emperor, second dynasty

The wars of the sons

Roman liberators and Seleucid conquerors

Between east and west

Breaking the system

The problems of prosperity

New men

Empire

Eclipse and restoration

The problem of succession

The edges of the Roman world

Children on the throne

The mistake of inherited power

Savior of the empire.

The first volume in a new series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Historian Bauer provides both sweeping scope and attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history. Dozens of maps provide a geography of great events, while timelines give the reader an ongoing sense of the passage of years and cultural interconnection. This narrative history employs the methods of "history from beneath"

literature, epic traditions, private letters and accounts

to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled. The result is a tapestry of human behavior from which we may draw conclusions about the direction of world events and the causes behind them.

From publisher description.