Gombrich's A Little History Of The World

Gombrich managed to fit a lot of historical events in his short text and picked smart themes as the framework. Although, perhaps we should have rethought his plan of what events to choose since A Little History of the World focuses mostly on European history, rather than world history. Therefore, the title is not very fit for the chosen material.
The four themes, spirituality, creativity, violence, and individuals, were chosen wisely, since the text would be nowhere near the same without either one of them. It is an outstanding and significant text; there is no question about it. As for the content, it was relevant, but in my opinion, some of the details seemed unnecessarily. Although, that all depends on the reader’s preference. Especially since so many events are presented, all the little details become lost and insignificant. A successful strategy that Gombrich used was writing creating chapter titles because they made it easier to remember what we read. For example, I will always associate “The Storm” with the Huns, the Visigoths, and terribly scary times. …show more content…
To achieve this, he wrote in an engaging writing style and often spoke to the reader and asked questions. He compared things from history to his modern world since that increased the reader’s understanding of the topic. While introducing the Italian Renaissance on page 163, he compares finding an old school exercise book with ancient Greco/Roman texts. “Amazed by your mistakes, but also by the good things you had written? Yet at the time you hadn’t noticed that you were changing. Well, the history of the world is just the same.” His style allowed readers to relate to the text, making it a great

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