History of the Western world

An old oriental story tells of a young king who was suddenly seized with a burning desire to investigate the past. He sent for his scholars and ordered them to write down the history of the past. After several years he remembered his situation and sent for the scholars and asked them how they had progressed in their work. They happily told him that they had just completed it in sixty volumes. He thanked them for their toil, pointed to his gray hair, and asked them to compress it into three ...