“This exciting saga crosses space and time to illustrate how humans, born of stardust, were shaped—and how they in turn shaped the world we know today.” —Publishers Weekly This book offers “world history on a grand scale”—pulling back for a wider view and putting the relatively brief time span of human history in context. After all, our five thousand years of recorded civilization account for only about one millionth of the lifetime of our planet (Kirkus Reviews). Big History interweaves different disciplines of knowledge, drawing on both the natural sciences and the human sciences, to offer an all-encompassing account of history on Earth. This new edition is more relevant than ever before, as we increasingly grapple with accelerating rates of change and, ultimately, the legacy we will bequeath to future generations. Here is a path-breaking portrait of our world, from the birth of the universe from a single point the size of an atom to life on a twenty-first-century planet inhabited by seven billion people.

Why and how have whites joined people of colour to fight against white supremacy in the United States? What have they risked and what have they gained? For anyone who has wondered about the character, motivations, and contributions of white civil rights activists, Refusing Racism offers rich portraits of four contemporary white American activists who have dedicated their lives to the struggle for civil rights. Drawing heavily on interviews and memoirs, this volume offers honest accounts of their thoughts and experiences and shows how their commitments are central to our ongoing history. Meet the White Allies: Virginia Foster Durr, J. Waties Waring, Anne McCarty Braden, and Herbert R. Kohl.

Gives instructions for writing oral histories and biographies including such aspects as planning, interviewing, transcribing, editing, and publishing the results.

This book is the first book to explore the history workshop approach at the middle and secondary levels.

Evaluates the ways in which the story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott is misrepresented to children.

The newest way to think about the universe becomes engaging and personal in Big History, Small World: From the Big Bang to You by Cynthia Stokes Brown. Her clear introduction to big history, divided into eight thresholds of time, is the perfect starting point for any reader intrigued by this rich blend of history and science. Big History, Small World is also the first book about big history specifically designed to be used in high school courses and with the free curriculum available from the Big History Project cofounded by Bill Gates and David Christian. Big History, Small World is organized into twelve chapters. In the first chapter, Brown discusses the scientific method. In the last chapter she discusses the different ways people interpret big history and find meaning in it. The other ten chapters are based on eight major turning points, or thresholds, in the cosmic story. One threshold, the emergence of life, gets two chapters, while a discussion of the future fills chapter eleven. This book is not formatted as a traditional textbook, although it can easily be used as one. Each chapter has questions on the frontier of knowledge, as well as suggestions of how the content applies directly to the reader, to answer the perennial question: “Why do I have to learn this?” There are illustrations, charts, diagrams, a glossary and timeline, and short biographies of scientists and historians who have been influential in developing big history. Cynthia Stokes Brown has taught world history in high-school and trained high-school teachers at Dominican University of California, where she piloted big history courses and helped initiate the big history program now required for all freshmen. She is the author of the general-interest book on big history, Big History: From the Big Bang to the Present (New York: New Press, 2nd ed. 2012) and also wrote a university-level textbook with David Christian and Craig Benjamin, Big History: Between Nothing and Everything (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014). She is a founding member of the International Big History Association and associate editor of its publication, Origins.

Traditional Chinese edition of Big History：From the Big Bang to the Present

Aceasta nu este o carte de istorie! Nu veți găsi în ea informații despre războaie, eroi, tratate secrete sau doctrine politice. Istoria lumii de la Big Bang până în prezent este o carte de „investigații“. Ce drumuri am parcurs, ce tovarăși de călătorie am avut, unde ne-am poticnit, în ce am crezut? Și, apoi, unde vom ajunge? și peste câtă vreme? Este povestea devenirii noastre și a lucrurilor esențiale pentru noi: climă, hrană, comerț, religie, idei inovatoare, imperii și culturi. În analiza etapelor parcurse, autoarea recurge la datele și metodele specifice studiului istoric riguros, dar și la nenumărate informații despre trecut pe care le oferă, cu generozitate, științele exacte și religia. Ni se înfățișează astfel o viziune integratoare a devenirii speciei umane, cercetată în cadrul proceselor naturale care au loc la scară planetară, chiar cosmică. De la apariția universului până în zilele noastre, istoricul Cynthia Stokes Brown ne poartă într-o călătorie în care îi veți întâlni pe primii vânători și agricultori, pe vikingi, azteci, mongolii lui Genghis-Han, europenii Evului Mediu, dar și cei ai revoluției industriale și ai epocii contemporane, realizând o sinteză extraordinară între cunoașterea istorică și cea științifică.

Volunteers are hard to find. Parents are often busy and stressed. Youth workers get confused and burnt out. Its easy to be discouraged by or question the impact of your churchs childrens ministry!

打破學術分科藩籬、構建人類歷史圖像的全新觀念 比爾．蓋茲與歷史學家共同打造「大歷史計畫」 揭示地球環境與人類歷史之間微妙的關係 探討自大霹靂、星系演變、生命誕生、人類出現到早期社會萌芽、農業文明誕生、工業化世界與你我的未來，引領讀者通貫一百三十七億年的宇宙與人類大歷史 【專文導讀】中央大學歷史所教授兼文學院學士班主任 蔣竹山 【什麼是大歷史計畫？】 「大歷史」是澳洲麥考瑞大學（Macquarie University）歷史學教授大衛．克里斯蒂安（David Christian）所使用的歷史敘述方式，其特色是綜合自然與人文等諸多學科於歷史中，構成一個單一卻連貫清晰的歷史敘事，為所有的人類知識提供一個宏大的知識架構。後來該學說受到比爾．蓋茲的注意，他倆因而合作一個大歷史計畫（Big History Project），針對歐美中學生、大學生，以及有志推廣大歷史概念的教師，設計一系列線上教學課程，望能以跨學科、全景式眼光構建人類歷史的完整圖像。 此書挑戰了人們對歷史的既定刻板概念，跨越自然科學與人文科學之間的界限，提出了一個全新的視角。作者認為，將人類的故事生硬地劃分為「科學」與「歷史」並無必要，因為這兩者之間存在著深刻的聯繫與互動。從宇宙的誕生開始，作者帶領讀者探索從137億年前的宇宙演化，一直到近百年人類進入工業化時代的歷程，這一過程涵蓋了宇宙學、物理學、化學、生物學及歷史學等各個領域的最新研究成果。 作者深入探討了地球環境的變遷如何與人類歷史的發展密切相連，這種微妙的關係揭示了人類文明的演變和未來的可能走向。透過跨學科的視角，讀者將能夠更全面地理解人類在這一漫長歷史長河中的位置，以及面對當前與未來挑戰的準備。這不僅是一部歷史的回顧，更是一場思想的探索，啟發我們思考人類的命運究竟會走向何方。