The work is published under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization by an International Commission presided over by Professor Pauls E. deBerredo Carneiro of Brazil. The Commission consists of 23 members, mostly academicians from 23 countries. The commission also has a corresponding membership of 93 drawn chiefly from the academic personnel of 42 countries.
Textual material for the _History of Mankind _was prepared and edited by hundreds of experts in the widely ranging fields covered by the History. Final approval of the text came from the Commission. In cases where there were differences of opinion or of interpretation, varying and opposing points of view are presented.
_The History of Mankind _is in six volumes.
I. Prehistory and The Beginnings of Civilization.
II. The Ancient World.
III. The World A.D. 400 to A.D. 1300.
IV. The World A.D. 1300 to the End of the Eighteenth Century.
V. The World in the Nineteenth Century.
VI. The Twentieth Century. All but the first volume of the History deal with the epoch during which civilization has played a fateful role in world affairs.
Professor Arnold J. Toynbee's ten volume Study of History is concerned chiefly with the rise and decline of those civilizations which have left a noteworthy historical record. His emphasis is geographical and political rather than cultural and social. The same thing may be said of other histories of civilization. They stress personalities, nations and empires.