In 1935 with a doctorate in art history & no prospect of a job the 26-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Amazingly he completed the task in an intense six weeks & Eine kurze Weltgeschichte fur junge Leser" was published in Vienna to immediate success & is now available in twenty-five languages across the world. In forty concise chapters Gombrich tells the story of man from the stone age to the atomic bomb. In between emerges a colourful picture of wars & conquests grand works of art & the spread & limitations of science. This is a text dominated not by dates & facts but by the sweep of mankind's experience across the centuries a guide to humanity's achievements & an acute witness to its frailties. The product of a generous & humane sensibility this timeless account makes intelligible the full span of human history."