Big History

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  5/22/2023
  

  The Latest Big History Thesis: It's All Nepo Babies

  by Maya Jasanoff

  Maya Jasanoff reviews Simon Sebag Montefiore's history of humanity through its dynastic families, which presents a much bloodier and creepier gloss on "family values" in ancient and modern times. 

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• SOURCE: Aeon
  12/16/2021
  

  What "Big History" Misses

  by Ian Hesketh

  "Big History" has become established in the popular media and in some academic quarters, telling global-scale narratives of human and even planetary history. After 30 years, it's time to evaluate its successes and failures. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/6/2021
  

  Rutger Bregman: Despite Everything, Humans Aren't the Worst

  Kara Swisher's "Sway" podcast features Rutger Bregman's defense of the human potential for good, and the need to create the social structures in which genius can thrive. 

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  11/7/2021
  

  What Can History Teach about the Future of War and Peace?

  Historians have generally been unimpressed by claims made by Stephen Pinker that humanity is enjoying a period of peace. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/10/2020
  

  A New Theory of Western Civilization (Review)

  "The WEIRDest People in the World" is the latest addition to the Big History category. The outstanding feature of the genre is that it wrangles all of human existence into a volume or two, starting with the first hominids to rise up on their hind legs and concluding with us, cyborg-ish occupants of a networked globe.