Universal History and the Telos of Human Progress: How History is Made

For the first time ever, all the historians who have written world history textbooks for students or the general public since the beginnings of civilization- Western and Eastern- have been brought together. The goal: to ascertain the meaning they found in the whole human story after having written it. Some no doubt wrote to fulfill a contractual obligation, but most were concerned about the trajectory of their particular society, and humanity as a whole community. They used the world's history as a grand context within which clues could be found as to the fate of both. This book likewise organizes the visions and concepts they brought forth, in the order they appeared. Nearing its end, in a conclusion Howard Bloom called "anthemic," what emerges is a scintillating philosophical justification for the human colonization of the Solar System.