C.V. Wedgwood has been internationally praised for her human approach to history. Here she presents a wonderfully bold and wide-ranging narrative history of the world from the beginning of civilization to the early Renaissance. Wedgwood takes the reader on a journey through time to the very origins of man and the early cultures and then, sweeping across the world and through the centuries, to the sack of Rome, the discovery of America, and the Reformation. This is a wonderful, invigorating and lucid survey of world history undertaken in the belief that we are the heirs to the ages. "Her style is a model of clarity. And in sheer readability she is a match for any historian living or dead." "One can only marvel at the skill." "A wonderfully lucid narrative history of the world."