This book started out really well, and the first half was really enjoyable, and informative, as it focused on the author's area of expertise. Unfortunately, from the moment it reached the beginning of the Twentieth Century, it started to ignore or twist facts in order to fit in with a line in which Trotsky was always right and always agreed with the Socialist Workers' Party view. This culminated in a section on the formation of the state of Israel which falsely claimed that Zionism had been a right-wing minority view within the 19th Century rather than a left-wing minority view, and then went on to make the claim which I'd consider anti-Semitic that Jewishness is not an ethnic or cultural group, but just a religion. This is so self-evidently untrue that I stopped being able to take the author seriously at this point.

Conclusion: first half excellent; second half claptrap (including anti-Semitic claptrap) to toe the party line.

I took a very long break from this book, but finally returned to it in the last few days.

The beginning and end of this book are gems—the middle is a bit of a slog. However, I found the chapters covering the 20th century to the modern day to be very illuminating, and I think any leftist who was educated in history by neoliberal public institutions would be well served to read it.

My only real gripe with the authors point of view was in (rightly) condemning Zionism, he insists that Judaism is only a religion, “not a nation, or a race”. This is false, categorically. Judaism is an ethnoreligion.

I think possibly the most important section of this book is the final chapter and the conclusion—never have I seen the problems facing our society so succinctly summarized, with the due urgency.

I also appreciate that the book ends with the five lessons of history that ought to be taken if we are to to avert a neoliberal societal collapse. It’s nice to read a modern leftist text that actually has genuine, usable advice for revolution—instead of complaints about the current state or utopian fixes (cough, Utopia for Realists) that are simply impossible to see through without dismantling our global system of power.

What a tome! From prehistory to Trump all with a focus on class struggle and Marxist analysis. Not the easiest of reads but definitely not dry or too dense - I’ve learned a lot from it and it is guaranteed to make you very very angry about the state of things today....