book search

A friend is looking for a book on world history in English. As I could easily name titles in German, but have no idea even where to start looking in English, I thought I could ask you.
So, world history, preferably in a short form, but still with some scientific value, not the "what your teachers never told you in High School" sort.
Unfortunately, I have no information on the time period he's looking for. So I have to suppose Stone Age up until today.
Is there anything that does not take up a whole mile on a bookshelf?
Any suggestions would be very welcome.

Crossposted all over the place.

Duh!

I had posted something yesterday, or at least thought I did. I didn't check, so didn't notice until today it was only saved as a draft, not actually posted.
I guess I am spending way too much time doing brainless stuff on the computer.

The weekend was nice. On the trip with the choir we got into a heavy rain, but apart from that it was more fun than I had expected, despite me being about fifteen years younger than the next youngest participant.
And I won two bottles of wine. Great thing for somebody who doesn't drink alcohol. My parents will be happy, I suppose.

Then Sunday I got to meet linnapaw and show her all around Würzburg. She was very nice keeping up with me walking miles and miles (leading her the wrong way, too) and jumping from recent history to mythology to whatever all the time. Monday we spent on the base and I got to show her where I work.
The best was to have somebody to really talk about all kinds of things, to go from Narnia and Harry Potter to religion and history and back all in one evening.
I'll definitely miss not having her on the same continent anymore.

Surprisingly, or maybe not, my car worked all weekend and also yesterday when I went to Schweinfurt for the main purpose of not letting it stand around for too long. I have hopes for tomorrow.
A coworker offered to sell me his car, a 2000 Fiat Punto, for 5000 Euros, which is pretty much the maximum of what I can spend on a new car. He wants the new model and will sell his as soon as the new one's out, which will be sometime around April. It's in good shape and everything, though probably not my favorite company or model.
I was pretty much decided to talk my Dad into letting me buy it and only drive the Lancer until then.
But then I wrote an email to my Mom and she's against it. Meaning I'd not face the opposition of one but both of my parents. Even if it is my own money, this is a bit too much for me to want to deal with right now. The thing is, my Mom thinks the Punto is too small and therefore not safe enough (can it possibly be more unsafe than a car without airbags, without ABS, but the tendency to switch off the engine while you're driving?) and my Dad doesn't like Fiat at all. It does have a bad reputation for needing a lot of repairs, but this particular car has not needed anything but the required changes of parts in the last six years.

So it looks as if I am back at point zero. My parents apparently want me to drive this car until it breaks down completely. We'll see when and where that is, I just hope it's not going 130 km/h on the Autobahn...

Anyway. I started this post at eight o'clock this morning and it's now past 5. I just came back from the goodbye party of a coworker and need to get ready for going to the theatre in Meiningen tonight. Katrin asked me to come with her because she didn't want to go alone. But she drank several glasses of wine and some liquor this afternoon at the party, so I think I'll ask her to let me drive (her car though, she doesn't want to try going in mine), just to be safe. I hate driving cars I don't know, but I guess I'll have to do that if I want to buy a new one anyway, so whatever.

Gotta go and put on some nice clothes. See you guys.