The Book of Centuries is my name for a book that has one chapter from each century. If it had 35 chapters of 10 pages each it would be 350 pages long and go back to the -1300s, the time of King Tut.
The idea is to get a complete sweep of history in the space of one book.
Each chapter would have some introductory paragraphs and then something written in that century. It should be something that gives a sense of the times, of its thought, feeling, everyday life, historical events, etc. Best would be excerpts from letters, diaries, travel accounts, newspapers, court cases, histories, even graffiti or bar tabs. A window onto each century.
Geography: Where would the writings come from? Some ideas:
- Global – Have a demographic balance of the whole world, from as many different places as possible. You should get a sense of not just the West but also India, China, Africa, etc – of the whole world. This would give you a mosaic view of history.
- Eurocentric – follow the Torch of Western History: Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, England, the US. Roughly the same path as the written script I am writing in now (each chapter could start with a picture of how writing looked in that century). This would give you a linear, Western view of history, the kind taught at schools in the West.
- National – pick one country, like Egypt, Greece or China, one with a long, well-documented, past.
- By library – take all the excerpts from books in a particular library, like from those of Timbuktu, Alexandria, Jefferson, Isidore, Augustine, or Thoreau.
Ones I would like to see: Egypt, Greece, Alexandria, Timbuktu. Also Manhattan but it does not go back far enough.
As an example, a book of centuries might go something like this, taking excerpts from the following:
- -1400s: Battle of Megiddo
- -1300s: Amarna letters
- -1200s: Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani)
- -1100s: The Will of Naunakht (an Egyptian woman of modest means)
- -1000s: Late Ramesside Letters
- -900s: Book of J (earliest known version of Genesis)
- -800s: Homer: Iliad (but pick a passage not about historical events since the book is set in the -1100s)
- -700s: Bible: Book of Isaiah
- -600s: Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
- -500s: Lao Tzu: Tao-te-Ching
- -400s: Herodotus: History
- -300s: Plato: Apology
- -200s: Confucius: Analects
- -100s: Bhagavad Gita
- -000s: Caesar: Gallic Wars
- +000s: Bible: Gospel of Matthew
- +100s: Marcus Aurelilus: Meditations
- +200s: Origen: Against Celsus
- +300s: Letters found in Egypt
- +400s: Diamond Sutra
- +500s: Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy
- +600s: Koran
- +700s: Li Bai (one of the greatest Chinese poets)
- +800s: Theophanes: Chronicle
- +900s: Beowulf
- 1000s: Murasaki Shikibu: Tale of Genji
- 1100s: al-Idrisi: Tabula Rogeriana
- 1200s: Marco Polo: Travels
- 1300s: Ibn Batuta: Travels
- 1400s: Mayan Madrid Codex
- 1500s: Leonardo: Notebooks
- 1600s: Shakespeare: The Tempest
- 1700s: Olaudah Equiano: Interesting Narrative
- 1800s: Sears Catalogue
- 1900s: Anne Frank’s diary
- 2000s: The Economist
That is just to give you an idea. I am not saying those are necessarily the best choices.
– Abagond, 2019.
See also:
- books
- books I wish I had read sooner
- Stories listed by century – when they take place, not when they were written
- Deir el-Medina
- demographically weighted world history
- King Tut
- libraries:
549
I love this idea! If you were to compile and publish I’m sure many readers, myself included, would buy…
I like the global idea best but even that will always be biased toward literate societies (unavoidable). The best piece of writing that evokes the spirit of each century seems fairly balanced if that’s what you were doing with the list. Holy book chapters are a must. If you were to go further back the Epic of Gilgamesh would be good too.
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Put me down for this book.You have done a lot of research over the years, apparently so you have a keen head start. How long do you think it will take to compile this?
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I would put 1800s: Das Kapital
We will never fully appreciate this book. If it were not for the deaths, destruction, famine and epidemics brought by the various aspects of socialism, maybe the Earth would have now 20 billion people
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So write that book.
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“If it were not for the deaths, destruction, famine and epidemics brought by the various aspects of socialism, maybe the Earth would have now 20 billion people”
Monteiro, you. are. too. funny. Keep up the comedy.
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@ Para
“I like the global idea best but even that will always be biased toward literate societies (unavoidable).”
Unfortunately it will also be unavoidably biased toward male authors, although Abagond did include a few women in his examples. I especially like the inclusion of Murasaki Shikibu because she is often credited with having written the world’s first novel (or at least the first work that matches what the modern world would classify as a novel).
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“Eurocentric – follow the Torch of Western History: Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, England, the US. Roughly the same path as the written script I am writing in now (each chapter could start with a picture of how writing looked in that century). This would give you a linear, Western view of history, the kind taught at schools in the West.”
I don’t get this part?
I thought you were trying to avoid the whitewashing of history?
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@grojo
It seems more eco-friendly because lives are not considered equal. Sure 7 billion is seems more sustainable than 20 billion. But who are deemed worthy to live?
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I wonder what a “Book of Centuries” would be like if it had 35 chapters, one for each century, but instead of being weighted by time, it was weighted demographically.
So the last chapter would cover over half the book. But each chapter would have a complete section.
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