Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History - Hardcover

Christian, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520235002 ISBN 13: 9780520235007

Publisher: University of California Press, 2004

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 this title

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).

From the Inside Flap

"You've all seen the poster of the milky way galaxy with an arrow to a point about halfway out from the center and the caption, ‘You are here.’ This book is like that only more so. It locates the human experience in the entirety of space-time."—Alfred Crosby, author of Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900

Reviews

San Diego State University historian Christian is one of the founding figures of the "Big History" movement. His basic premise is that to truly make sense of human history, history must be integrated with virtually all other disciplines-and in order to do this correctly, historians must reach back to the beginning of time. It is becoming fairly well accepted for historians to draw on biology, economics, environmental studies and politics as well as a host of other fields of study, and Christian does a very nice job of explaining the factors that led to the rise of states, the industrial revolution and the information revolution, as well as looking at future possibilities for humankind. What is far less successful is his integration of cosmology, astrophysics and evolutionary biology with the basic fare usually associated with historical analysis. Rather than using the cosmological principles associated with the Big Bang, for example, to demonstrate "underlying unity and coherence" in all systems across time, Christian leaves the reader with a weak metaphor and limited insight. By attempting to cover all of the universe's 13 billion years in a single volume, even one approaching 600 pages, Christian is forced to use such a broad brush that readers will find much of this book to be fairly superficial. 45 b&w illus., 9 maps.
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from the Foreword by William H. McNeill

"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. . . . You, who are about to peruse this book, have a great experience before you. Read on, wonder, and admire."

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520235002
• ISBN 13: 9780520235007
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 664