Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity

(John Hannent) #1

———. Millennium III, Century XXI: A Retrospective on the Future.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. An introductory discussion on the perils
and the promise of futurology.


Taagepera, R. “Size and Duration of Empires: Systematics of Size.” Social
Science Research 7 (1978):108–27. Rein Taagepera wrote a number of
pioneering articles attempting to assemble basic statistical information on
large historical processes. His work is not always easy to ¿ nd.


Tomasello, Michael. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Tomasello’s idea of “cumulative
cultural evolution” is similar to the idea of “collective learning” presented in
this course, though he places less emphasis on language in explaining human
ecological virtuosity.


Toulmin, Stephen, and June Good¿ eld. The Discovery of Time. Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1965 [reprinted 1977]. Though dated
in some of its details, this remains one of the best available histories of the
construction of a modern sense of time.


Trigger, B. G. Early Civilizations: Ancient Egypt in Context. Cairo: American
University in Cairo Press, 1993. A comparative history of the appearance of
Agrarian civilizations in different parts of the world.


Turner, B. L., W. C. Clark, R. W. Kates, J. F. Richards, J. T. Mathews, W.
B. Meyer, eds. The Earth as Transformed by Human Action: Global and
Regional Changes in the Biosphere over the Past 300 Years. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990. A collection of essays on the changing
relationship of humans with the biosphere in modern times.


Wagar, Warren. A Short History of the Future. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1992. A rich, absorbing, and deeply intelligent “history” of
the next few centuries, by a specialist on the work of H. G. Wells.


Watson, J. D. The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the
Structure of DNA. New York: Touchstone, 2001 [reprint of the 1968 edition].

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