"It was a long time ago" - this is how all the best stories in the world begin, including "Little World History," written by the great historian and art critic Ernst Gombrich in 1936, when he was not at all great and only became a historian. Instead of peppering its young or not-particularly-young reader with dates and facts, this fascinating and spirited book unfolds before him a breathtaking panorama of humanity's existence on planet Earth, from the Stone Age to the Atomic Age. Gombrich describes wars and revolutions; great works of art; scientific breakthroughs and dead ends that scientists went into. He is interested in everything from the invention of cave painting to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and everything from Confucius to Churchill. Translated into dozens of languages, Little World History is now being published in Russian in a wonderful illustrated edition - for adults who are interested in looking around the history of the world with one eye, teenagers who need to prepare for the exam in a couple of hours, and children who first get acquainted with reality, where everything, it seems to them, happened a long time ago.