ABSTRACT
One big difference between ourselves and our predecessors centuries ago, is that we now take historical change for granted. We are no longer surprised by it; it is taking place all the time, and more rapidly and widely than ever before. The growth of population in the last 200 years is enough by itself to make much of previous history seem almost static. Yet of this sort of change comparatively few people, perhaps, are aware; others have been much more spectacular. Since the first edition of this book was published, men have gone to the moon and walked about on it. Yet among those who watched them on television screens as they did so were many who had been born before there were aeroplanes, and even before the motor-car had become a familiar object.
