Little Book of Big History – Ian Crofton

If you really want to understand the story of humanity and how we fit into the universe, you have to go right back to the Big Bang. Then you need to understand how stars and planets formed, and how our own planet manages to sustain life. After that, it’s a matter of getting to grips with how evolutions works and how modern humans are descended from ape-like ancestors.
This is the approach of ‘big history’, which, like Bill Gates’ international Big History Project, is another way of looking at our past that draws not only on historical records but also on a range of discipline, from cosmology and biology, to archeology and anthropology.
In a series of essays, The Little Book of Big History outlines the key point in our fascinating story, from the first tool-users right up to the internet age and beyond, to help us understand the world we live in today.