One Time Fits All provides the first full framework for understanding attributes of civil time, which is used throughout the world today. It focuses on three components of uniform time all linked to the prime meridian at Greenwich—the International Date Line, the worldwide system of Standard Time zones, and Daylight Saving Time (Summer Time)—tracing the story of their beginnings and eventual acceptance from original sources in Europe, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. The book concludes with an examination of the recent changes in America's Daylight Saving Time that are scheduled to take effect in 2007.

"Perhaps the greatest globalizing force—long before globalization found its name—was the vast effort to coordinate date and time-keeping in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It was an effort that drew in astronomers and mariners, train magnates and politicians: an astonishing campaign that gave us regulated time around the planet. In One Time Fits All, Ian Bartky, one of our clearest and most accurate historians of time, presents us with a remarkable, readable, and international history of this period. And in the process he clears up a myriad of misunderstandings and distortions that have cluttered the field for a several generations. I recommend it with great enthusiasm." - Harvard University