David Christian

A history of the world from the big bang to the present. "Big history" is a new approach to world history that joins the history of the world as a physical entity to human history. David Christian is the leading proponent of this approach to world history.

An Introduction to Big History

Maps of Time

Chris Aldrich

This is an interesting change of reference from a historical perspective combining cosmology, astronomy, geology, microbiology, evolutionary theory, archaeology, politics, religion, economics, and history into one big area of contiguous study based upon much larger timescales. Though it takes from many disciplines, it provides for an interesting, fresh, and much needed perspective on who humans are and their place in the world. 

I'd highly recommend this to any general reader as early as they can find time to read through it, particularly because it provides such an excellent base for a variety of disciplines thereby better framing their future studies. I wish I had been able to read this book in the ninth or tenth grade or certainly at the latest by my freshman year in college.

This could be an extremely fundamental and life-changing book for common summer reading programs of incoming college freshman. I wish I could make it required reading for life in general.

Maps of Time An Introduction to Big History

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