Chronicles, or lengthy narratives of historical events as they unfolded, are a lost art. Throughout history, monks and court officials spent countless hours in solitude committing the past to parchment with a simple goal: to remember history in all its colorful essence, listing kings and battles, popes and treaties, empires and wars. In modern times, a more thematic history, often much narrower in scope and time, has replaced the massive chronicle. Now the age of Wikipedia and, in recent months, A.I. has allegedly diminished the value of encyclopedias and of books dense with facts. You want to know who Enea Silvio Piccolomini was? Ask Siri. Curious about Hadrian and his male lover? Claude may have a view on the sundry details.

But there is still a place for books of massive erudition. This is certainly what former newspaper publisher Conrad Black must have thought as he wrote the second of his three-volume Political and Strategic History of the World. The book is not for the faint of heart or feeble of arm. It is an imposing ocean of typography, an impressive testament to the author’s energy and learning, ranging from A.D. 14 to 1661 in 1,200 pages—and that is only Volume II.

The book begins with Tiberius, the adopted son of Augustus, and ends with the Stuart restoration in England and Scotland. In between, the reader encounters a relentless sequence