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Title: Unreadable...
Review: I was looking for a good overview of world history and many raved about this Oxford professor's one-volume "History of the World." Problem is, even for a reasonably educated person like myself (I have an advanced degree), Professor Roberts' writing style was so cumbersome, tortured, and convoluted that I had to re-read passages several times. Occasionally, passages still made no sense, or were so vague as to be equivical, after re-readings. I'm sure Professor Roberts was a good teacher and knew a lot. But none of this amounts to a hill of beans because his writing is so terrible. A much better one-volume history, in my view, is William McNeill's handbook on the History of Western Civilization (although its emphasis is on the West).
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