This is the book that had such a powerful impact on Malcolm X. Its easy to see why. The history of the world is vividly outlined in an erudite and readable style. (Ever since I read 'The Time Machine' when I was sixteen, I have considered Wells to be the clearest writer of prose in the English language.) Wells takes us from the very beginning of life right up to the League of Nations in 1922, stopping off at most points in-between: Neolithic cavemen, Periclean Athens, Roman and Byzantium civilisations, the life of Jesus, Confucius and Lao Tse, the rise of Islam, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, discovery of America, the Industrial Revolution, World War I, and so on. The book is breathtaking in its scope, but Wells manages to give a succinct, vivid and comprehensive view of world history. I have found myself re-reading many of the chapters and I do not doubt that I will soon be re-reading the book in its entirety. There is little to criticise in this book - maybe it is a little Euro-centric; in the last chapters he does tend to labour his point a bit; and the early chapters are a little dated as we now know so much more about the evolution of our species. These are mere quibbles. Read it and become informed. Read it and be entertained.

I read an older edition of this work. It was the first overview of world history I had read through at the time (young). Before you read a basic, universal history of the world like this one (and almost anyone will do for a first reading [except for the most asinine modern day politically-correct ones]...) you will tend to have alot of bits and pieces of historical knowledge in your mind, but it's all very vague and there's not a clear sense of timeline, etc... For instance I knew of the name of Julius Caesar, but I didn't know (I'm talking about just starting out here, folks...) if he was a real person or a mythological character or what... I'd heard of Napoleon, but if asked to explain his role in the French Revolution (or to even answer if he HAD role in the French Revolution) I would have not been able to give an answer... I found H. G. Wells' little book (which isn't, by the way, an abridgement of his much longer and more famous OUTLINE OF HISTORY but a separately written book on its own...) fulfilled this role of what a basic world history can do very well. He does have his biases and his opening chapter(s) on 'evolution' is quaint and I'm sure gives a tingle of pleasure to the buffoons in academia who still have their life savings invested in that over-inflated stock, but, all-in-all it's a very enlightening overview of this fundamental subject that can give so much perspective...

If you have ever wondered about how history hangs together, then this is the book for you. From the dawn of civilization to the modern era, Wells takes you along the journey of civilization (and pre-civilization -- the first few chapters of the book cover geology and evolution). This tome, and if ever a volume merited the word this is it, carries you along the way with Alexander, Persian Kings, Khans, Crusaders, Chinese Emperors, Popes, French Citizens, Tsars, and Kaisers. The sweep of characters, times and places includes a wonderful vista of history, all together and seen in relation to its entirety.

Yes, it's dated. Yes, it's slanted. H. G. Wells is very Victorian in his ethics. His politics were Fabian Socialist so you will find a distinct undercurrent for a socialist world government driving the story along. He is as un-Eurocentric as you could expect for the time: Europe and the Middle East take up the majority of the book, China and India play the next biggest role, followed distantly by Africa, Australia and the Americas.

The flaws are few given the task, the style is immensely readable, and the man who wrote The War of the Worlds, Time Machine, The Invisible Man and the Island of Doctor Moreau knows how to tell a story. Wells had the nerve to take on the World and the world gets a ripping good yarn with Mankind as the hero. You're part of the story; why not read it?

Also if you liked this book, you might enjoy:

Guns, Germs, and Steel : The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

Democratic Ideas and Reality by Halford J. Mackinder

While this is by no means a complete collection of Wells' science fiction, it does consist of his most famous seven novels: The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The First Men in the Moon, The Food of the Gods, and In the Days of the Comet. Bonus features include a short preface written by the author and several original illustrations from each book's initial publication. The typeface is a little unusual in that the text is presented in two columns per page, but this format does hark back to the old style of book and magazine publication. The novels are arranged in chronological order, but Wells suggests in his preface that those not yet familiar with any of his work may be better served by first reading The Invisible Man or War of the Worlds. While I have reviewed the novels included here individually, I thought it important to at least make clear exactly what this collection consists of. If you can find this book it is an excellent buy, particularly so for those just discovering H.G. Wells.

Normally, I do not like Well's work. But, these were some of his best. I have not been able to find a better place to find these books. They are a great read to even people who have never heard of him. I recomend buying this book, I know I liked it.

Wells provided a means of spending countless enjoyable and educational hours with my son that continue to this day. Now 19, he was introduced to Little Wars at age 9. It is in no small part responsible for his current knowledge of, and interest in, History and Geography (and, by extension, other things as well).

I find it interesting that H.G.Wells and Sir Winston Churchill shared this hobby. Interesting, but, I suppose, not really surprising after seeing first-hand what a child's imagination does with Wells' ideas.

The hard-cover copy I found back in the early 70's is loaded with drawings and pictures.

This is a light read, describing the famous author's system for taking children's toy soldiers and making a "Kriegspiel" (the Prussian General Staff method of wargaming) for the common man, and boy, of whatever age (and, Wells adds, for "girls of the better sort"). Wells' game used the famous Britain's toy soldiers, employed rules for movement and melee, and utilized toy cannon to provide the firepower. This is a delightful book, enriched by HG Wells imagination and skillful writing

My wife and I read this 1909 H G Wells book in'79 E R A - womens liberation in London, Suffragettes at the turn of the century. A beautifully written book.

This book is a "must have" for any fan of literature, science fiction, or just plain good story telling!

"The Time Machine" is the opening story in this book and starts the reader moving through the world of H.G. Wells. He will entice you with stories that pique the imagination, that range from the ancient past into the far future.

Over sixty short stories adorn this classic work, including:

The Empire of the Ants - killer ants from South America?

The Land Ironclad - land ships with guns can change trench warfare? (written in December 1903)

The Door In The Wall - a man recounts his boyhood memories of a door leading to a magical garden...

The Tempatation of Harringay - an artist is tempted by the devil himself

The Country of the Blind - is the one eyed man King in the land of the blind?

The Flowering of a Strange Orchid - Vampire flowers?

The New Accelerator - a man creates a mixture that allows him to move at ten times normal speed (concept adapted for a "Wild Wild West" episode)

Get the book, you won't be sorry.

(review based on hardback edition)

I thought the war of the worlds was an ok book the thing's i didnt like about it was that in alot of parts in the book it dragged on and on like they just kept on running and running from the martians from mar's.Thing's i enjoyed about the book were it was cool about them breathing fire on the people at where the cylinder first fell.I also liked the times when the martians started destroying everything but it dragged on alot.
Ialso enjoyed when the army came and tried to shoot down the martians but nothing happend.

I am an Old Time Radio fanatic. I love War or the Worlds and this book is the definte history of this imfamous radio broadcast. The Mercury Theater on The Air was such a great crew and this book tells a great deal about them.

War of the Worlds enthusiasts continue to love, emulate and draw new stories from this, the original outer-space invasion novel. The story has been filmed twice--once as a television series and once as a 1950's sci-fi epic--but it's been copied and re-told many times in other films, INDEPENDENCE DAY included. What would Hollywood do without this original, one-of-a-kind horror story? This new book has everything, including a CD and excerpts from a recorded discussion between H.G. Wells and Orson Welles, as well as the original 1938 Welles broadcast, and two press conferences with Welles. What's missing is the fascinating story of how and why Wells wrote this story (it's truly a horror tale--our hero has to sit in an abandoned house for days, listening to the Martians eating live humans, for instance), which contains many of the same suspenseful elements you'll find in other classics that will not die--such as FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA and SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. When I traveled to England to attend a meeting of the H.G. Wells Society in 1998 (the centenary of War of the Worlds' publication), I was treated to a walking tour of the actual Martian landing site, the sand pits of Woking. Then, we followed the same path that the Martians traversed during their campaign against the world. A small, polished pebble lifted from the sandpits sits before my writing desk, a relic of a fictitious war for which, like the recent attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, no-one was prepared. Wells was living in a time of unrest, when anarchists (terrorists?) might strike at any time at the powerful and arrogant British Empire, and the portent of war was everywhere. War of the Worlds was a wake-up call! Ray Bradbury's foreword is worth the price of the book. He is truly Wells' successor--a behavioral optimist who in every way is the kind of writer Wells tried to be. Incidentally, Bradbury once told me that he missed his chance to meet H.G. Wells when he lectured in L.A. Bradbury was a high school student and didn't have the price of admission. Besides, he told me, "I was afraid I'd die of a heart attack if I met him!" Wells dominated the first half of the 20th Century, Bradbury the second half. Both were believers in the potential and unrealized greatness of humankind. Both are worth reading. --Jim Reed, author of DAD'S TWEED COAT: SMALL WISDOMS, HIDDEN COMFORTS, UNEXPECTED JOYS

The Book That Began Sci-Fi
This is a book way ahead of its time. It chronicles the invasion of Earth by the inhabitants of neighbouring Mars, from the point of view of the anonymous protagonist. Some of the ideas may seem somewhat inane upon reading the book presently, but bear in mind that it was written over a hundred years ago, where the concept of interaction with extra-terrestrial beings was thoroughly infantile.
The book is seemingly written as a documentary with the hard-hitting authenticity of a late-night news bulletin as opposed to a fantastical yarn spattered with conspicuously impracticable fairytale imagery. This therefore creates a tangible sense of realism that causes the reader to wonder how they might have fared were they thrust into the same situation.
Wells manages to keep the suspense mounting throughout, exploring the reaction of tense and fearful pre-WW1 humanity to the physical embodiment and culmination of their apprehensions, and the novel concludes in a way rather pleasingly unexpected, and that could almost serve to be the twisted moral of this paranoid parable.
If you are looking for a book in which you can examine character developments and interactions, then The War Of The Worlds is at best inappropriate. However, it is a valuable contrivance insofar as instigating speculation as to mankind's position in the universe, and indeed the position of those civilizations and cultures traditionally or habitually thought of as subservient to one's own.
The casual reader might have some difficulty with Wells' linguistic manner, and indeed may have only come across some of the vocabulary used through listening to MatronsApron, yet Wells still manages to explain events thoroughly and concisely.
To conclude, then, The War Of The Worlds is a literary landmark that unquestionably invented the entire science fiction genre, and should appeal to fans of action, fans of adventure, fans of science fiction, and conspiracy theorists alike. With this book, H.G. Wells has proven to be a social commentator, sublime documentarian, sci-fi pioneer, and a splendid storyteller.

Science fiction plays two roles for the reader. The more familiar one is to provide a perspective on the future implications of technology and to raise new issues and choices. The less familiar is in providing a context for evaluating what we now see from the wrong perspective.

All science fiction inevitably becomes dated in the first dimension. The truly great science fiction retains its strength in the second sense. I have rated The War of the Worlds with five stars solely for that second value.

Regardless of its currently creaky scientific perspective, Wells did an astonishing good job of extending upon the knowledge available to him in the late 18th century. Manned flight had not yet occurred, and he was providing plausible concepts of interplanetary travel. The discussions of the impact of a planet's distance from the sun on the timing of the evolution of life, distance on the timing of life's destruction, and on how gravity will affect space travelers are superb.

Let me mention that I had the great good fortune to hear this book read in an audio cassette editon by Alexander Spencer, and that reading greatly added to my enjoyment of the book. Mr. Spencer was able to capture the emotional ups and downs of the novel very well, and that makes it much more immediate. If you have not heard this novel read aloud, I strongly urge you to do so.

The story line of the novel is exceptionally well developed around the theme of what it really means to be human. The war with the Martians becomes a source of stress that allows us to look behind the social mask of civilization to consider the moral state that people have arrived at. In many ways, he also uses the Martians as a counterpoint for considering what we might become. This is masterfully done. He adds to the metaphor by continuingly referring to various bacteria, insects, and animals as our counterparts, our superiors, and our victims. The comparisons are worthy of Socrates.

I was fascinated to see the eloquent plea for realizing our symbiotic relationship to nature. This is turned into a very powerful argument for environmental restraint just at the end of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and demonstrates remarkable prescience.

Wells also looks at humans from the perspective of our minds, our bodies, and our spirits. He has the greatest faith for our minds in this regard. Science, for him, is the great hope.

The story is well plotted, as well. Those who enjoy a good sack of the city along the lines of Godzilla or King Kong will find the War of the Worlds rewarding. I particularly appreciated Wells' skill in keeping the narrator and his brother near the center of the action.

To enjoy this book as an adventure tale the most, you will have to ignore the implausible parts of the story and the unending lists of place names in England. I didn't find that to be too much of a price to pay. After a while the places started to seem familiar. Perhaps looking them up on a map would help.

After you have finished reading this story, I think you will find it helpful to speculate how the 21st century human population would probably react to alien visitors to the Earth. I found that my own reaction was to reflect on how much progress we have made in moving away from thinking of humans as the life center of the universe in the last 100 years. But we have a long way to go. Perhaps we can only truly make significant progress when we first find extraterrestrial life superior to our own.

Another useful line of thinking is to imagine that we will meet superior extraterrestrial life in the future. What should we be working on now?

Think ahead to gain the most!

This was one of the first books I read as a child, and it is still one of my favorite bed time stories. Wells wrote his famous chronicle of the Martian invasion of Victorian Britain at the turn of the century, and the world has since gradually chipped at the book's scientific authenticity. The book, however, still stands tall even today as a dramatic vision of the collapse of civilization. Well's vivid description of the destruction, the terror, and the agonies of humankind's slow death at the hands of the Martians chills the blood. It has never been truly matched. Wells also created one of the great books of all time representing themes ( genocide, the possible extinction of humanity, the dominance of science over humanity, the yearning to explore the universe and spread the seeds of life to other worlds) which would haunt the next century. Events like the holocaust, the splitting of the atom and the cold war, and Kennedy's dream to send man to the moon make "War of the Worlds" seem prophetic. Even the book's conclusion appears today like an eerie warning of the dangers in harvesting the potential of biological weapons. While other science fiction has become outdated and forgotten, Well's book, even after more than 100 years, continues to present a contemporary message for society.

Although it is not as famous as some of his earlier science fiction books (or "scientific romances", as they were then called), and is not an absolute classic like those books are, The First Men In The Moon is nevertheless a delightful and important satrical SF novel. Also, its importance in the development of modern science fiction cannot be overestimated. Although numerous books before had dealt with a story set on another world (let us here, for the sake of convenience, refer to the Moon as a "world"), Wells's book is the first to make it convincingly real. Although, one hundred years on, much of the novel's science is dated and Well's Moon is far different from how we now know it to be, nevertheless, Wells here created a world out of his own imagination, and describes it with such a convincing level of detail that one actually feels like they are there. And the science, indeed, was, in fact, quite up-to-date for the turn of the century. The structure and format of the novel also was highly influential: one will see immediately upon reading it just how much modern science fiction owes to this novel, and to Wells (and yet, Wells himself borrowed prodigiously from previous books on the subject.) The book was originally supposed to end at Part I: Part II was added later by Wells after the book was already in the process of serialization. I think that the addition of Part II is what makes the book good instead of great. If it had ended as it originally would, it would still be a good book - a rousing adventure, an interesting yarn - but it would not be great. The second part makes the book a full-on satire - something that the earlier portion had merely hinted at. It sharply and bitingly satarizes manking and his many follies, particularly war. This addition of satire and borderline philosophy makes the novel a truly great one. I read an essay on this book that said it differs from Wells's earlier SF novels because it is not grim. I beg to differ. The ending, to me, seems quite grim, indeed. Although it does not involve the imminent extinction of man himself as earlier works did, it is nonetheless quite pessimistic and grim. The addition of the second part of the novel and the ending also pave the way for Wells's later works - ... This is a true science fiction classic that deserves to be more highly-regarded than it is.

What always gets me with Wells is the forcefulness of his imagination -- his ability to construct powerful, symbolically resonant setpieces based upon the scientific ideas of his time. In the final pages of "The Time Machine" he gave us one of the great apocalyptic visions in all of literature. In "The First Men in the Moon," he gives us a magnificently alien setting, full of bizarre moments -- jumping about the lunar surface in 1/6 G; the Giddy Bridge and the Fight in the Cave of the Moon-Butchers; the bizarre lunar ecology, in which all the plants die every night and are reborn each dawn.

Scientifically, much of this stuff doesn't hold up after a hundred years. And the device he comes up with to get his characters to the moon -- Cavorite -- is without basis, an arbitrary magical tool not unlike the time machine. Even when Wells' science is iffy, though, he presents it in such a clear, convincing fashion that you are only too glad to suspend disbelief while the story unfolds.

In the Selenites we have a metaphor for a different type of society -- rigidly hierarchical, with the needs of the individual sublimated to the whole. The metaphor obviously comes from social insects; though it became a sci-fi cliche, it was still fresh circa 1901. In the remarkable last section of the book (Cavor's communications from the moon), Wells describes the Selenite society with delightful attention to detail. He ends with a haunting, unforgettable image, and probably the best closing sentence of any sci-fi novel.

Cavor, a genius, invents a material that allows him to build a Gravity-Defying Sphere. Soon he and a young, and very greedy, businessman use it to go to the moon. They find not only life, but the Selenites, a culture who can change their shape to fit their jobs. In other words, form is designed for the function of their class or in this case their caste. Over them rules the Grand Lunar, a being whose large brain gives him awesome power and foresight beyond even the businessman who tells us the story. Both characters show their human merits and their very human flaws. Not science fiction as much as a book on society.

My daughter's name is Veronica Anne, and I ran into the Project Gutenberg edition of this text on a routine websearch. I'm halfway through the book, and loving it! I hope my Veronica grows up to be as independent and spirited as Ann Veronica. :)

Firstly, even though the author is H.G. Wells you should not harbor any notion that this is a work of science fiction.

It is however a rather interesting story of the dual coming of age of a woman and a society in a time of dramatic social change. This book provides the missing link between Jane Austen's era where the notion of an independent woman encompassed little more than a woman who did not automatically marry the first man of means who proposed to her and our modern era where we fully accept the notion of a "man-equal" female character like Heinlein's Friday. And the transformation is a most interesting, exciting, and at times enlightening one. As Ann Veronica wanders through the political and social landscape of Victorian England we are exposed to the rather startling sentiments of the time and the rather harrowing and bold adventures she undertakes in her journey to freedom, as well as to a panoply of interesting characters (like the man hating Mrs. Miniver and the absolute cad Mr. Ramage).

This book is not for everyone, but it is a very worthwhile and entertaining read if you can get into it.

This is the best book I ever read. I own 2 copies of it, one so I always have it in the house if I want to reread it (which I have many times) and another so I can let friends borrow it! "Ann Veronica" is a woman after my own heart, she lives life in her own way and doesn't listen to what anyone else wants her to do. She follows her dreams and her ambitions and lives a wonderful life. Every woman should read this book!

I thought it was really good. The reason why I give it 4 stars out of 5 is because some of the picturs didn't match the story. My favorite part was at the end when the Invisible man stalked Dr. Kemp, because he betrayed him. I recomend the book to anyone who is going to buy it. That all I got to say about the book.

I liked it because Jack Griffin, the discoverer of the formula, would wear bandages over his head and sunglasses and pretended he had a head injury, and he was a scientist, and he didn't wear any clothes if he didn't want to be seen! When the police were after him, he didn't wear clothes anymore! (He must have been cold!) Pretty soon, the formula made him want to murder people who didn't follow his orders. Read the book to find out the rest!! Excellent!!!!!

Your young readers are bound to enjoy this great book. Well illustrated and hard to put down.