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Simon Schama's Complete History of Britain, which spans the Stone Age to the year 2000, does not claim to offer a full account of the dramatic events that molded the British Isles. Schama tells the story in vivid and riveting narrative terms, outside of traditional academe, personalizing key historical events by scrutinizing crucial personalities. Schama's approach of describing history is more engaging since it focuses on great men and women rather than abstract events. Schama successfully debunks the myth that Britain's history has been moderate and temperate, passing down the centuries as stately as a galleon, embracing rational ideas while avoiding more revolutionary ones. Nonsense. Schama retells British history as brutal, convulsive, precarious, hot-blooded, and close to veering off course. Schama seemed to take pleasure in history's gore. The wars between the Scots and the Irish, as well as the Catholic/Protestant clashes, were recurring themes—only the Irish subject remained unresolved by the new millennium. As the United Kingdom transitions to a constitutional monarchy, Schama focuses on poets and thinkers like Orwell. Still, Schama makes history feel as if it happened yesterday, the bloodstains not yet dry, with his pungent, direct approach set against an evocative visual and audio backdrop.