This expansive survey of world history--completed in 1962--challenges the Oswald Spengler-Arnold Toynbee view of history as a series of separate cultures that evolved separately. McNeill proposes that as individual civilizations developed, they most likely influenced and resembled one another. He draws from numerous literary and non-literary sources, and the book contains a number of illustrations and maps. Slightly Eurocentric in its approach, this is nevertheless considered a classic of Western literature.