Global History: A Short Overview

"This great little book is well-written, erudite and provides a sweeping historical survey which anyone with an interest in world history will find a very valuable introduction."
--Professor Anthony McGrew, Politics Department, Southampton University

"This is a good contribution to theories of globalization, bringing an important historical dimension to approaches that are often ahistorical. The additional focus of civilizations rather than nation-states is particularly interesting."
--Gerard Delanty, University of Liverpool, Network

"Noel Cowen's brave and brief text consciously imitates and combines the broadest patterns suggested by McNeill, Wallerstein and Braudel. His subject is not humanity but 'civilizations' that developed significant surpluses beyond subsistence...Cowen predicts an impending victory for financial imperialism, which has already converted most of the world's elites into its gospel of economic growth and higher living standards. If the human community can be provided with a unifying history, it will not likely be built over the sad skeleton of the history of tyrannies that Cowen's conscientious account so clearly exposes." (Canadian Journal of History, December 2004)