Big History
Published on 21. November 2011
Book
Paperback/Softback
176 pages
978-1-933782-92-8 (ISBN)
Description
Big History, a Berkshire Essential, places the history of humanity and the Earth in the largest of contexts - that of the universe. The interdisciplinary approach taken in this Berkshire Essential volume draws from diverse fields including archaeology, paleoanthropology, astronomy, and biology and raises new questions about the future of our species and its relationship to the biosphere. The articles, including several written by author David Christian, convey big history's span and scope from cosmology, creation myths, and the Gaia theory to ice ages, extinctions, and migrations. Big History also explains why many geologists believe the world entered a new geological epoch (the Anthropocene) at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when human activity unwittingly became the single most important force for change in the biosphere.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Great Barrington
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 254 mm
Width: 178 mm
Weight
333 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-933782-92-8 (9781933782928)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
David Christian is a professor of world history at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and co-founder, with Bill Gates, of the Big History Project. In 1989, Christian began teaching the first course on ""big history,"" an interdisciplinary field that examines history starting with the Big Bang, and his work came to the attention of Bill Gates through a video course produced by The Teaching Company. He is the author of Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, which won the World History Association book prize (2004), and is writing a history of Central Asia. He is also the author of Living Water: Vodka and Russian Society on the Eve of Emancipation and (with R. E. F. Smith) Bread and Salt: A Social and Economic History of Food and Drink in Russia. He has spoken about big history at the TED Conference, the World Economic Forum, and on the Comedy Central program The Colbert Report.