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The Stone Age to the year 2000 are covered in Simon Schama's book, The Complete History of Britain. The book doesn't try to be a definitive history of the turbulent events that shaped and changed the British Isles. Schama, on the other hand, tells the story in a way that is vivid, interesting, and free of the stuffiness of traditional academic writing. He does this by looking at the major characters at the center of key historical events. Not all historians would agree that history was mostly shaped by the actions of great men and women rather than by more abstract changes, but Schama's way of telling it is a lot more interesting because of it. Schama successfully disproves the idea that Britain's history has been calm and steady, with sensible ideas being passed down from generation to generation while silly, revolutionary ideas are left out. Nonsense. Schama tells British history the way it really was: bloody, violent, dangerous, hot-blooded, and close more than once to going off on a completely different path. Schama seems to almost take pleasure in how gross history is. Some themes that keep coming up are the wars between the Scots and the Irish and the fights between Catholics and Protestants. Only the Irish question is still unresolved in the new millennium. As Britain becomes a constitutional monarchy, Schama talks less about Kings and Queens and more about poets and idea-makers like Orwell. Still, Schama makes history seem like it happened yesterday, and the bloodstains are still wet, with his blunt, direct style and evocative visual and aural background.