Maps Of Time: An Introduction To Big History

Christian, David

ISBN 10: 0520244761 / ISBN 13: 9780520244764

Published by Univ of California Press, Berkeley, 2005

About this Item

xxii+642pp. Pictorial colour photographic front cover and spine, mild edge & corner wear to covers, clean and tight pages, b/w plts., illust., text ills., full page maps, diags., tables, graphs, appendixes, notes, bibliog., index. Maps Of Time unites natural history and human history in a single, grand, and intelligible narrative. This is a great achievement, analogous to the way in which Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century united the heavens and the earth under uniform laws of motion; it is even more closely comparable to Darwin's nineteenth-century achievement of uniting the human species and other forms of life within a single evolutionary process.It is a historical and intellectual masterpiece: clear, coherent, erudite, elegant, adventurous, and concise. Size: Octavo.

Seller Inventory # 000459

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Maps Of Time: An Introduction To Big History
• Publisher: Univ of California Press, Berkeley
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520244761
• ISBN 13: 9780520244764
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Very Good
• Book Type: Book

About this title

Synopsis

An introduction to a new way of looking at history, from a perspective that stretches from the beginning of time to the present day, "Maps of Time" is world history on an unprecedented scale. Beginning with the Big Bang, David Christian views the interaction of the natural world with the more recent arrivals in flora and fauna, including human beings. Cosmology, geology, archeology, and population and environmental studies - all figure in David Christian's account, which is an ambitious overview of the emerging field of 'Big History.' "Maps of Time" opens with the origins of the universe, the stars and the galaxies, the sun and the solar system, including the earth, and conducts readers through the evolution of the planet before human habitation. It surveys the development of human society from the Paleolithic era through the transition to agriculture, the emergence of cities and states, and the birth of the modern, industrial period right up-to intimations of possible futures. Sweeping in scope, finely focused in its minute detail, this riveting account of the known world, from the inception of space-time to the prospects of global warming, lays the groundwork for world history - and Big History - true as never before to its name.

About the Author

David Christian is Professor in the Department of History at San Diego State University. He is the author of Living Water: Vodka and Russian Society on the Eve of Emancipation (1990), Imperial and Soviet Russia: Power, Privilege and the Challenge of Modernity (1997), and A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia: Volume 1: Inner Eurasia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire (1998).