The Cartoon History of the Modern World is a wickedly funny take on modern history. It is essentially a complete and up–to–date 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, Globalization––and 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.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 22 reviews)

Continuing Enjoyment!

Having enjoyed the first three in the series, I had to see how Gonick would handle modern history. First, the cartoon framework, with its jokes and simplified (but not simplistic) explanations, helped me to stay engaged through the entire book. Second, actually seeing drawings of the kings and popes, scholars and artists helped me to remember who did what when. Finally, the sources that Gonick relies on seem to be pretty disparate in their viewpoints, and he relies on a number of cross-referenced academic fields, like macroeconomics, human consciousness, anthropology, and geography to help him explain national narratives. Unfortunately, Africa and Asia get short shrift in this edition, and the cartoons are getting denser as the series progresses. Overall, I'd say that if you like history outside of history class, then you should add this book to your collection.
January 04, 2009

Too many details

I hate history. I bought this book for a friend and hope he has enough 'basic' information already to get through this. The cast of characters is unwieldy and how the people connect with others is confusing. Way more information than I wanted. I don't even understand the jokes - if there CAN be jokes about boring history. The only way I'd look into this book again, is if my giftee sits by my side and explains the details in this tome - but I'll only devote another 5 minutes to any such capsulization. This book just reinforces my resistance to history.
October 02, 2008

I love this guy.

He always uses humor to bring low the ego of man and the pomposities of our forefathers, and hence ourselves. It's good we don't take ourselves too seriously. We will make better choices for our future that way.

For those who might criticize this book as glossing over certain episodes: Well, I hope this isn't someone's *only* history book. It should just be in everyone's collection along with other reputable history volumes. These books are good for pointing out the history hidden well between the lines in most history texts.
June 08, 2008

Great, but ...

Of course all the Cartoon histories are really great, illuminating, and educational, but on this one, I kept being irritated by with it references to today's events - references that a in a few years will be incomprehensible. A historian should write for the ages.
January 01, 2008

The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 1: From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution

Great for a student who just can't get into the dry text book in history class. Factual, funny and in a cartoon format. Student's who find that they have no interest in history, may decide differently when they read this.
October 27, 2007

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