Each of the last ten centuries has seen seismic changes that have altered human life forever. But which has seen our world change most dramatically? Did railways affect us more than the discovery that the Earth rotates around the Sun? How do you weigh technology's impact against the Renaissance or the abolition of slavery? Has space travel changed our lives more than clocks or guns? And what, after all, do we mean by change? Because to understand our past is to understand human nature: who are we, what have we done over the course of a thousand years, and what we are capable of doing in the future. Ian Mortimer is unrivalled in his ability to immerse the reader in history's daily reality. As in his bestselling Time Traveller's Guides to medieval and Elizabethan England, here we see both the great movements of history and their impact on real people. Sweeping from 1,000AD to the turn of the millennium, and across the western world, Centuries of Change will inspire you to reimagine the past. But more than anything it is a mesmerising guidebook that transforms the past from a foreign country into a place we understand better than ever before.
