Key insights from
The Lessons of History
What you'll learn
What happens when two world class historians write an 11-volume history of humankind over the course of four decades and then distill from those 10,000 pages the most common, instructive themes? You get The Lessons of History.
Key insights
- • What you'll learn
- 1 Human existence has always been a tenuous affair.
- 2 Geography has shaped patterns of human settlement, but people aren’t bound by it the way they used to be.
- 3 Human nature has changed very little over the millennia.
- 4 Theories of superior races fall apart quickly in the light of history.
- 5 Peace has been extremely rare in human history—and moments of peace only come through conquest.
- 6 The particulars vary, but civilizations follow the general outline of humble beginnings, rise, decline, and dissolution.
- 7 No civilization truly dies.