A Short History of the World is a n-fictional historic work by Herbert George Wells. The book was largely inspired by Wells' earlier 1919 work, The Outline of History. The book covers the history of the world, spanning the believed origins of the Earth, around 2,000 million years ago (w believed to be 4,404 million years, according to 2005 estimates) to the League of Nations in 1922. Wells' two-volume Outline of History was the first general history constructed on an evolutionary, sociological, and anthropological basis. It was immensely popular and set the basis for this book, A Short History of the World, which Wells created to meet the needs of the busy general reader, too driven to study the maps and time charts of that Outline in detail, who wishes to refresh and repair his faded or fragmentary conceptions of the great adventure of mankind.