A people's history of the world / Chris Harman.

"From the Stone Age to the new millennium"--Cover.

Originally published: London : Bookmarks, 1999.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

pt. 1: The rise of class societies: The neolithic 'revolution' -- The first civilisations -- The first class divisions -- Women's oppression -- The first 'Dark ages' -- part 2: The ancient world: Iron and empires -- Ancient India -- The first Chinese empires -- The Greek city states -- Rome's rise and fall -- The rise of Christianity -- part 3: The 'Middle Ages': The centuries of chaos -- China: the rebirth of the empire -- Byzantium: the living fossil -- The Islamic revolutions -- The African civilisations -- European feudalism -- part 4: Great transformation: The conquest of the New Spain -- Renaissance to reformation -- The birth pangs of a new order -- The last flowering of Asia's empires -- part 5: The spread of the new order: A time of social peace -- From superstition to science -- The enlightenment -- Slavery and wage slavery -- Slavery and racism -- The economics of 'free labour' -- part 6: The world turned upside down: American prologue -- The French Revolution -- Jacobinism outside France -- The retreat of reason -- The industrial revolution -- The birth of Marxism -- 1848 -- The American Civil War -- The conquest of the East -- The Japanese exception -- Storming heaven: the Paris Commune -- part 7: The century of hope and horror: The world of capital -- World war and world revolution -- Europe in turmoil -- Revolt in the colonial world -- The 'Golden Twenties' -- The great slump -- Strangled hope: 1934-36 -- Midnight in the century -- The Cold War -- The new world disorder.

"Chris Harman describes the shape and course of human history as a narrative of ordinary people forming and re-forming complex societies in pursuit of common human goals. Interacting with the forces of technological change as well as the impact of powerful individuals and revolutionary ideas, these societies have engendered events familiar to every schoolchild - from the empires of antiquity to the world wars of the twentieth century. In a bravura conclusion, Chris Harman exposes the reductive complacency of contemporary capitalism, and asks, in a world riven as never before by suffering and inequality, why we imagine that it can - or should - survive much longer. Ambitious, provocative and invigorating, A People's History of the World delivers a vital corrective to traditional history, as well as a powerful sense of the deep currents of humanity which surge beneath the froth of government."--Book cover.