If you ever wondered what a popular history is, Rosemary Jones has produced a classic, called ?Bermuda: Five Centuries?. It should prove very popular indeed. ?Five Centuries? tells Bermuda?s history in a modern and readable way that will rightly find its place in school libraries, local homes and Christmas stockings.

The book is part of the ongoing millennium celebrations in Bermuda. The author somehow completed this manuscript and saw it through to publication at the same time as having and raising a baby, a not entirely dissimilar and equally time-consuming process.

?Five Centuries? has been published by Panatel VDS Ltd., the local cinematographers, just in time for the 500th anniversary (more or less) of the discovery of Bermuda by Juan de Bermudez. Its publication was made possible by a grant from the Bank of Bermuda to the Bermuda Millennium Committee at the Department of Cultural Affairs.

In five sections, none exactly 100 years long, Jones traces Bermuda?s history from the very first days to yesterday. Her well-paced and consistently interesting story, which forms the spine of the book, is mixed in with (and sometimes subsumed by) sidebars and photographs on most pages, intended to throw a sharper spotlight on aspects of the history more broadly discussed in the main body of the text.

Most readers will be used to that approach from reading magazines, but I confess to finding some of the extra material distracting, at least here, in the context of Jones?s vivid text. Mea culpa; I have an old-fashioned concentration span.

What inevitably happens, when a woman of Rosemary Jones?s formidable intelligence carries out the necessary research on a subject as vast (and well-reported) as all of Bermuda?s history, is that an amalgam emerges. To the received wisdom, the author adds her own insight and discoveries, and the result is an addition to the great work-in-progress that is the written output of this Island/State.

The writer of a Bermuda history, in particular, has to meet and overcome some difficult truths. For instance, and probably most importantly in this context, by no means all Bermudians are proud of their history. Slavery was in force until 1834 and segregation only ended in 1959. The way to come to terms with something is to look it in the face and stare it down, and Bermuda has not yet done that with regard to its roots. Jones is a battle-hardened journalist, who worked with the Toronto Star and the Toronto Sun, and edited The Bermudian. In dealing with what for so many remains sensitive, in her quietly authoritarian way, she has not steered her vessel wrong. She reports with accuracy on the time when Bermuda was not an equal society and the times before and since, when it was and is differently unequal.

I confess to being surprised that the period from 1946 to the present day, the epic drama of the Bermuda story, is told so quickly, in much less than a fifth of the book. On reflection, of course, a work that focused too heavily on the 20th century is not the book that Jones wanted to write, nor should she have. For one thing, recent history is always the best-known. Then, too Catherine Duffy, another local writer, has recently issued a massive work centred on that period. Jones would also have been aware that the development of international business is another chapter of Bermudian history in which a number of Bermudians feel little ownership. The meat of ?Five Centuries?, for this reader, is thus in its middle sections.

It would be unfair to ask if this was the definitive Bermuda history. I am completely attached to W.S. Zuill holding that title for his ?The Story of Bermuda and Her People?. His son being the Editor of this newspaper has absolutely nothing to do with that view, which I have held for donkeys? years. With ?Five Centuries?, Jones has not tried to capture that throne, however. Hers is much more user-friendly, highly-illustrated and accessible work for the modern reader, where the thrill of Zuill?s text is mostly in the telling.

Sales-wise, we have a winner. Given its coffee-table lay-out and its compelling subject matter, ?Five Centuries? will be destined to sell in Bermuda bookshops until someone writes the sequel, ?Six Centuries?.

Few communities anywhere in the world, of Bermuda?s size, have a compelling story to tell. You tend to love this book before you start reading it, because you know broadly what it?s going to say. For it to succeed, therefore, a new Bermuda history must present the material in such a way that the reader stays engaged, while learning and underlining existing knowledge. On that basis, ?Five Centuries? is a great success. Bravo.