Bookfest: Simon Sebag Montefiore

With this book, he shines a light on a new kind of world history, one that is genuinely global, spans all eras and all continents, and focuses on the family ties that connect every one of us. He chronicles the world’s great dynasties across human history through palace intrigues, love affairs, and family lives, linking grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion, and technology to the people at the heart of the human drama.

Here are the Caesars, Medicis, Incas, Ottomans, Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Krupps, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis, Kenyattas, Saudis, Kims, and Assads. Here too are moderns such as Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Volodymyr Zelensky. These powerful families represent the breadth of human endeavor, with bloody succession battles, treacherous conspiracies, and shocking megalomania alongside flourishing culture, moving romances, and enlightened benevolence. A dazzling achievement as spellbinding as fiction, The World captures the whole human story in a single, masterful narrative.