Product Description

Jared Diamond meets Stephen Hawking in the first popular book in an innovative new field that seeks to fit human history into the history of the universe, by an American Book Award winner. An epic book that Kirkus called "world history on a grand scale," Big History begins when the universe is no more than the size of an atom and ends with a twenty-first-century planet inhabited by 6.1 billion people. It's a story that takes in prehistoric geology, human evolution, the agrarian age, the Black Death, the voyages of Columbus, the industrial revolution, and global warming. Along the way historian Cynthia Stokes Brown considers topics as varied as cell formation, population growth, global disparities, and illiteracy, creating a stunning synthesis of the historical and scientific knowledge of humanity and the earth we inhabit.

Big History represents a new kind of history, one that skillfully interweaves historical knowledge and cutting-edge science. In an age when scientific advances permit us to grasp the history of mankind in the context of its ecological impact on the planet, Brown's lucid, accessible narrative is the first popularization of this innovative new field of study, as thrilling as it is ambitious.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #269219 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781595584144
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Beginning with the very origin of the universe, American Book Award–winning author Brown (Ready from Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement) shows that history is more than the written records of the gadfly species Homo sapiens. In a multidisciplinary narrative subtly emphasizing the mutual impact of people and planet, Brown covers Earth's history from the big bang through the development of life and the growth of civilization. Nice concrete details give immediacy to the most remote events: The gold in the ring on your finder has to be more than 4.5 billion years old. Brown's story covers the globe, encompassing the Mongols and Vikings, Mayans and Aztecs, as well as the Islamic Empire and Europe. Brown looks at the gold rush that followed Columbus's American voyages and the impact of chocolate, tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco and chili peppers on European habits. In a blink the Industrial Revolution and world wars lead to the new millennium. While much of the story is familiar, Brown's writing lucidly knits each topic into a vast historical mosaic. This exciting saga crosses space and time to illustrate how humans, born of stardust, were shaped—and how they in turn shaped the world we know today. 33 b&w illus. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
Cynthia Brown gives us a global history, one which provides the kind of historical knowledge that all students should bring to their understanding of current happenings.

(20090104)

Ordinary stars turn hydrogen into helium, helium into carbon, and so on. But only supernovas can create elements beyond iron; the elements that make life on Earth possible originated in giant exploding stars. Thus, Cynthia Stokes Brown writes romantically, "we quite literally are made of stardust." Alas, romance doesn't last long in Brown's brief history of everything. The "universal ancestor" -- the first living cells on our planet -- may have been related to today's blue-green bacteria. So we are stardust, yes; but we are "pond scum," too. Not to mention farmers: The earliest crops planted in the Americas include chile peppers and pumpkins. And voyagers: The Polynesians who reached Easter Island about 1,600 years ago must have landed on American shores long before Europeans did. How else could sweet potatoes have been introduced to the Polynesian islands? There's much to argue about in Brown's account, and much to discover.

(Alan Cooperman -The Washington Post Histories with Sweep )

Review
Cynthia Brown gives us a global history, one which provides the kind of historical knowledge that all students should bring to their understanding of current happenings.

Customer Reviews

A Really Big Picture
It's hard not to admire what Ms. Brown has tried to do with this book, Big History. In essence, as the subtitle to the book implies, she has tried to cover the history of the world starting with the big bang and working up through the present. By doing so, she attempts to provide a unity that is often missing from works of history, paying respect to the work done in the world of science and giving us a true "big picture."

In many ways, Ms. Brown succeeds with her work. Most importantly, she opens our eyes to ideas that are often left out of typical histories. She is very cognizant of what is left to answer in her field, finishing each chapter with a section of "unanswered questions" that are quite thought-provoking and may be the best part of this work.

On the other hand, this book can be little more than the broadest of overviews of historical trends. Coming in at 248 pages, one can't really expect much more considering the ground that she's trying to cover. This is not necessarily a bad thing but I have wed widely in certain areas that she discusses; in particular, as a science teacher, I'm well-versed in those subjects that touch mine: big bang theory, scientific/industrial revolution, etc. I've even read a number of the books she notes and I couldn't help but notice what's been left out of her discussion. The loss of detail in pursuit of the big picture is always a problem in books like this.

Still, it is a succinct and compelling volume in many ways. Ms. Brown is clearly familiar with the latest research and lays out her global vision well. For beginners in history, this would be an excellent place to start. And it's not bad for the rest of us either.

It's so concise...
...that, in addition to it, for those looking for a broad framework to understand the past, I would recommend to read the following works, whose scope is amazingly global: 1. Agrarian cultures: "Pre-industrial societies" by Patricia Crone; 2. Economy. "Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium" by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke; 3. Government: "The History of Government" by S.E. Finer; 4. Ideas: "Ideas, a History from Fire to Freud", by Peter Watson; 5. Religion: "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen; and 6. War: "War in Human Civilization" by Azar Gat.

History on the wider scale
If the world began thirteen years ago, modern industrial societies would have only existed for six seconds, says "Big History: From The Big Bang to The Present". The universe is 13.7 billion years old and "Big History: From the Big Bang to The Present" attempts to cover it all in a book that is as artistic as a novel while reducing humankind to the small spec that it is- while still granting it some dignity in an act of grand balance. Author and Professor Cynthia Stokes Brown combines so many elements and makes simply a delightful book in "Big History: From the Big Bang to the Present" and as such it has our highest recommendation for anyone with an interest of history on the wider scale or just history in general.