The Cartoon History of the Modern World is a wickedly funny take on modern history. It is essentially a complete and uptodate course in college level Modern World History, but presented as a graphic novel. In an engaging and humorous graphic style, Larry Gonick covers the history, personalities and big topics that have shaped our universe over the past five centuries, including the Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the evolution of political, social, economic, and scientific thought, Communism, Fascism, Nazism, the Cold War, Globalizationand much more.
Volume I of the Cartoon History of the Modern World picks up from Gonick's award winning Cartoon History of the Universe Series. That series began with the Big Bang and ended with Christopher Columbus sailing for the New World. This book starts off with peoples that Columbus "discovered" and ends with the U.S. Revolution.
专业书评
Grade 9 UpAn award-winning author presents a hilarious and informative survey of modern history. The book actually begins with an impressive 15-page distillation of pre-Columbian America; and while Europe and North America receive most of the attention, Gonick does include at least some highlights from other parts of the world. Covering such topics as the Protestant Reformation, the British defeat of the Spanish Armada, the Copernican model of the universe, and the American Revolution, he writes and draws with considerable wit and authority, and is obviously well versed in his subject. A good example of his cleverness appears at the book's outset, where he summarizes our knowledge of the first Americans who "arrived 12-, 15-, or 30,000 years ago, by land or by sea, from Siberia or somewhere else. They killed all the mastodons, ground sloths, and saber-toothed tigers, or else the big animals died of climate change." In the accompanying drawing, a man says to a serpent, "That much is almost certain." It is even more certain that most readers will enjoy this fun-filled trek through time.
Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA
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His long comic-book history of everything having reached the era of European exploration, renaissance, and reformation, Gonick changes the object of the titular preposition from
the Universe to
the Modern World No shift in comprehensiveness, however. Despite primary focus on Western Europe, worldwide coverage continues, and the rest of the universe is noted by attending to developments in science. This book begins, gratifyingly for many readers, with pre-Columbian American history, which is treated no differently than European history. That is to say, the most salient features are emphasized, and the most important figures are depicted, accompanied in every panel by ironic/sarcastic comments by representative commoners. Those bon mots just may be sharper and slyer than ever. For instance, in one panel an underling addresses the pope as "sire," which rings all wrong until Gonick points out the peculiarities of the pontiff in question, Alexander VI, whose many peccadilloes included several illegitimate children. Gonick's Harvey Kurtzman-meets-Hank Ketcham draftsmanship guarantees forward momentum even when the words are about, say, the ideas of John Locke.
Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Starred Review.Since 1971 Gonick has been writing and drawing his highly entertainingCartoon Guides, popularizing an extraordinary array of subjects, includinggenetics, physics, and even sex. Picking up where his most celebrated work, themultivolume
Cartoon History of the Universe,left off, Gonick has now undertaken to cover the modern world. Though Europe ishis focus, Gonick commendably devotes considerable attention and empathy to thenative peoples of India and the Americas. He irreverently undercuts commonlyaccepted historical myths: for example, Gonick persuasively and humorouslydepicts Columbus as utterly hapless in dealing with other people, whethernative Americans or his own crew. He also presents serious themes, tracing ahistory of religious intolerance and amoral quests for power and wealth,repeatedly resulting in mass slaughters. Gonick points to visionaries who sawbeyond the prejudices of their times, focusing particularly on the DutchRepublic as a forerunner of American liberty. Gonick usually draws his figuresin appealingly cartoony style, but will surprise readers with his occasionalventures into realism. Readers will be impressed by the scope of Gonick'sresearch, covering subjects from Shakespeare, Galileo and Machiavelli to theReformation and the American Revolution.
(Jan.)
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
媒体推荐
A master cartoonist picks up his award-winning Cartoon History of the Universe series in this complete story of the world.
作者简介
Larry Gonick has been creating comics that explain history, science, and other big subjects for more than thirty years, ever since Blood from a Stone: A Cartoon Guide to Tax Reform appeared in 1977. He has been a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and is staff cartoonist for Muse magazine.
