The book romps through history at a terrific rate: from ancient Greece through the Islamic empire of the 13th century, 15th-century China and Renaissance Europe to 20th-century America.
Locals claim that the territory of Asturias is the one and only true Spain, since it was the only part of the country that resisted Moorish occupation after the Islamic conquest of the eighth century.
But the second part of the book goes on to compare the educational institutions of the Chinese, Islamic and European traditions in the seventeenth century.