El mundo

Around 950,000 years ago, a family of five walked along a beach, leaving behind the oldest family footprints ever discovered. For Simon Sebag Montefiore these fossils serve as the inspiration for a new world history, one that is both genuinely global and intimate, spanning centuries, continents and cultures and focusing on the family ties that connect each of us. It chronicles the great dynasties that have shaped our world throughout human history through palace intrigues, love affairs and family lives, linking the big themes - war, migration, plague, religion or technology - with the people who are at the heart of the story. A rich cast of complex characters form the beating heart of the story. We will see the Medici and the Incas, the Ottomans and the Mughals, the Bonapartes, the Habsburgs and the Zulus, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers and the Krupps, the Churchills, the Kennedys, the Castros, the Nehrus, the Pahlavis and the Kenyattas, the Saudis, the Kims and the Assads. Some are well-known leaders - from Alexander the Great, Attila, Ivan the Terrible and Genghis Khan to Hitler, Thatcher, Obama or Putin - others were creative geniuses, from Socrates, Michelangelo and Shakespeare to Newton, Mozart, Balzac, Freud, Bowie and Tim Berners-Lee. But lesser-known characters are added to this list, such as Hongwu, who began as a beggar and founded the Ming dynasty; Kamehameha, conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, Arab Empress who challenged Rome; or Sayyida al-Hurra, Moroccan pirate queen. Here there are not only conquerors and queens, but also prophets, charlatans, actors, gangsters, artists, scientists, doctors, tycoons, lovers, wives, husbands and children.