A Short History of the World in 50 Places provides a new perspective on the grand sweep of our planet’s story, from the prehistoric era to the early twenty-first century, taking readers from the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where fossil evidence of over two million years of human evolution was uncovered, to the CERN laboratory in Switzerland, where cutting-edge contemporary technologies such as the World Wide Web were invented and developed. This book details fifty of the most important places in human history, taking in a great variety of sites, some well-known and others far more surprising, from every continent in the world. Each place brings us closer to major events such as humanity’s expansion out of Africa, the Industrial Revolution and the globalised economy, the World Wars, and the rise and fall of communist regimes, showing the place’s influence on not just politics, but on the economy, culture, religion and society. Even the most humble of locations can witness the turning of history.