I've been struggling through "The rise and fall of the great powers" by Paul Kennedy and while I am interested in it, it has been a brutal slog for me. In about 4 months I've willed myself through about 170 pages. A large part of the issue is I don't have a strong enough understanding of the events going on that he refers to, as he mostly spends time on explanations of why and how something happened rather than what actually happened.
With that in mind I am hoping to try to read a book that can give an overview of the main events in European (or world) history from ~1500-present . I am not looking for too much detail (as I would likely supplement missing details with google searches/wikipedia), but just want to get a basic idea of the chronology, purpose and effect of major events, revolutions and wars.
Are there any good books that summarize major historical events without focusing on one period or being extremely detailed?
Thanks!!
This is a very, very broad topic so there won't be too many histories that offer what you're looking for. You might want to check out Norman Davies' Europe: A History, although I've heard his writing can be dry. I'd also suggest Oxford University's massive History of the World series. There's currently three books in the series, each of which contains several book-length essays: Empires and Encounters: 1350-1750, A World Connecting: 1870-1945, and Global Interdependence: The World after 1945. Each book is about a thousand pages long, but they're all well-written and easily accessible to the general reader.
I've really been enjoying John Darwin's After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires 1400-2000