The Russian public has never known this Herbert Wells - the famous science fiction writer appeared in this book as a brilliant expert on history, an erudite interlocutor, capable, without getting bogged down in details and confusing details, to talk about Ancient Rome, Confucius and Prince Gautama, about the Crusades and the personality of Napoleon Bonaparte. This book cannot be called a textbook, for this its author is too cheerful and independent; Wells treats the history of civilization very simply: as a well-educated and very inquisitive person. He is interested in the same thing as any lover of “historical reading”: not the boring process of changing socio-historical formations, but facts, events, people with their passions, intrigues, hopes and delusions. Everything that has made living human life so extraordinarily attractive since the creation of the world.