The People's Chronology - About | Preface

This eBook version of The People's Chronology is intended as a handy online reference to historical developments, including many not found in conventional history books.

Since its first appearance in book form more than 25 years ago, the Chronology has come into wide use in U.S., Canadian, British, and Japanese libraries, newsrooms, radio and television news organizations, schools, and offices. Having proved itself as an accurate, reliable, and concise source of information, it has now been completely revised and updated for Internet users by its original creator, James Trager.

Entries are grouped by category. The 33 categories are:

1. political events
2. human rights, social justice
3. philanthropy
4. exploration, colonization
5. commerce
6. retail trade
7. energy
8. transportation
9. technology
10. science
11. medicine
12. religion
13. education
14. communications, media
15. literature
16. art
17. photography
18. theater, film
19. music
20. sports
21. everyday life
22. tobacco
23. crime
24. architecture, real estate
25. environment
26. marine resources
27. agriculture
28. food availability
29. nutrition
30. consumer protection
31. food and drink
32. restaurants
33. population

Encyclopedia entries are in alphabetical order. But history did not happen alphabetically; it happened day by day, year by year, and while there have been other chronologies they have all been bare-bones listings with little or none of the detail that brings history alive.

Exploring the past chronologically serves to demonstrate that knowledge grows incrementally, that one advance leads to another, that most innovations of value come from people who have built on work done by others in years past. A balanced, responsible chronology also helps to show interrelationships (often obscured in conventional histories) between politics, economics, energy, transportation, technology, science, and medicine.

The People's Chronology shakes the dust out of the history books. It lets the user return, in effect, to any given point in years past and savor the events of that particular time. Free of commercials (but not excluding brand names), it uses plain language to illuminate the real world, bringing in entrepreneurs, movie stars, inventors, sports heroes, civil rights leaders, scientists, songwriters—the men and women who made our world what it is today.