Having coined the phrase "the war that will end war," H.G. Wells was disillusioned by the World War I peace settlement. Convinced that humanity needed to awaken to the instability of the world order and remember lessons from the past, the author of The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds set about writing history. Wells hoped to remind mankind of its common past, provide it with a basis for international patriotism, and guide it to renounce war.Wells described his million-word Outline of History, published in 1920, as a "huge toil," but the work became immensely popular, earning him world renown and solidifying his reputation as one of the influential voices of his time.
Volume I begins with Genesis and ends with Justinian the Great. Volume 2 takes us from Muhammad to the Treaty of Versailles. Wells ends his masterpiece with a prescription for a world of communal cooperation - an analysis replete with shrewd guesses about the future - and a plea to no longer "tear out the hearts of men, even for the sake of our national gods."