The second volume of Simon Schama's epic history is a story of revolution and reaction, of progress and catastrophe. It is a story brought vividly, sometime disturbingly, to light by Schama's evocative narrative, filled with the lives of ordinary and extraordinary people. Here are the great and the gifted - Oliver Cromwell, Christopher Wren, Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Jefferson. But here, too, are the lesser known, though no less extraordinary, such as Olaudah Equiano, an African enslaved from childhood, who learned to write and wrote an unforgettable tale.