Bulliet, Richard W., Pamela Crossley, and Daniel R. Headrick. The Earth
and its Peoples: A Global History. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton MifÀ in, 2005.
One of the best modern texts on world history.
Cairns-Smith, A. G. Seven Clues to the Origin of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985. Cairns-Smith manages to make the details of complex
and highly technical debates both clear and fascinating.
Calder, Nigel. Timescale: An Atlas of the Fourth Dimension. London: Chatto
and Windus, 1983. A remarkable chronology for the whole of time, and a
delightful read. Some of the details are now slightly dated.
Chaisson, Eric. Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. In this pioneering book,
Chaisson argues that increasing complexity provides a promising, unifying
theme for any modern attempts at a coherent account of the past.
———. Epic of Evolution: Seven Ages of the Cosmos. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2006. Eric Chaisson has been teaching an astronomer’s
version of big history for many decades now, and this book is the result
of that experience. See also Chaisson’s website on “Cosmic Evolution”:
[http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/cosmic_evolution/docs/splash.html.]
Charlesworth, Brian and Deborah Charlesworth. Evolution: A Very Short
Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. The Oxford “Very
Short Introductions” provide brief but expert introductions to important
scienti¿ c ¿ elds.
Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Thomas D. Hall. Rise and Demise: Comparing
World Systems. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997. A valuable introduction
to “world systems” theory and its relevance for human history on large
scales, by two of the pioneers in the ¿ eld.
Christian, David. “The Case for ‘Big History.’” The Journal of World
History 2, no. 2 (Fall 1991): 223–38. Aimed at historians, this article argued
that it was both possible and important for historians to look for the links
between their discipline and other historical disciplines, from cosmology to