MONTEFIORE’S TITANS more than lives up to its billing as a compendium of great figures from Western history. Alas, the Indians, Chinese and especially Japanese who make occasional appearances feel like tokens. Why the Dowager Empress Cixi but no Sun Yat-sen, China’s gargantuan twentieth-century revolutionary? Why no Xuanzang, the monk who brought Buddhism to China, with epochal consequences? Surely Korea’s Admiral Yi Sun-shin was one of the greatest military leaders who ever lived? Southeast Asians are virtually absent. Shaka, the Zulu general, is the only African who gets a mention (unless you include the ancient Egyptians).

Indeed, for a book that has the word “world” in its subtitle, this one turns out to be surprisingly traditional—by which I mean “Anglocentric.” British writers and cultural figures—including some, like Byron, who are small fry by global standards—far outnumber any other contingent. The British political leaders run into the double digits—no other country comes close. The Venerable Bede makes the cut but Dante doesn’t. The chapter on Jack the Ripper takes up five pages—two more than the one devoted to Abraham Lincoln. Needless to say, this is downright insulting. Surely it wouldn’t have been that hard to find a representative American serial killer. After all, we practically invented the concept.

Christian Caryl is an Editor in the Opinions section at the Washington Post.

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