[Redactor's Note: The Outline is one of the most widely published short world histories. It owes its popularity not only to Well's style and insight, but also to the excellent maps and illustrations of J. F. Horrabin, which illustrations accompany this work (at 300 dpi) and are suitable of printing for use in K10-12 projects. Some of the speculations must be revised in the light of new developments in the latter half of the 20th century; notably carbon dating, the discovery of DNA, the Hubble telescope and space travel. In particular the section on the Piltdown man is totally erroneous with the discovery of the forgery of the artifacts. The book has been reprinted several times with new material up to 1949, but these did not correct any of the deficiencies of the original work, and so the original 1920 edition remains the most popular. In addition the many footnotes, omitted in later editions, provide valuable insight into the creation of the book, and also show how wrong the "experts" can be when they indulge in speculation. None-the-less the grand sweep of the dialogue and the beautiful maps provide a single encapsulated view of our current globe. The current public domain version (2002) was developed jointly by Holden McGroin (figures) and Norman Wolcott (text).]