Big History

Big History takes a comprehensive (ideally systemic, see also Networks) approach to history, thus gives us a context for understanding, investigating and ultimately changing the world.

3 min video overview.

It all began with David Christian's TEDtalk

It informs the History Channel series(some shorts, maybe good Object topics).

New PBS series How We Got to Now, companion book highly recommended.

CHRONOZOOM timeline tool: http://www.chronozoom.com/

Big History Project: https://www.bighistoryproject.com/bhplive.

The Walk Through Time iPhone App will be a Walking Documentary that tells the story of the Earth's 4.6 billion year history. (video).

Today in history searchable by date. History Channel version

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (humorous).

Topics

Black Death: The Upside to Killing Half of Europe.

A New Physics Theory of Life Jeremy England, a 31-year-old physicist at MIT, thinks he has found the underlying physics driving the origin and evolution of life. 1/15.

Videos

Big History History Channel TV series available in McHenry Media Center DVD10097 Disc 3 is 90 minute overview of all 8 thresholds).

Must-See videos: a list of videos i often reference in Wr 2 but rarely have time to show. These are often related to the environment, but Advertising and the End of the World is an excellent example of analysis (also green history and interesting biographies).

CSPAN American history videos. See also BookTV which has biographies,American History as well as World History.

PBS History (searchable), PBS World History includes Your Inner Fish (then reptile, then mammal...).

Cosmos(trailer) is an update of the legendary 80's version with Carl Sagan. The new version takes a very much Big History approach, emphasis on evolution and science.

History Channel (can't vouch for accuracy, as they're for entertainment) has I Love the 1880's and on, and The Men Who Built America (short excerpts of dramatization of robber barons, including Edison and Tesla's War of the Currents). Mankind: The History of All of Us parallels Big History, as does America.

Counter-History

Howard Zinn's excellent People's History (online), A People's History of the United States((video interview) 60 min. 3 hr with Q&A) ****. video on labor (begins with critique of history textbooks, his own education). Myths of the Good Wars (video). You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times. (video talk). How Can History Help Us in the Future?(good talk, though he answers the question obliquely, e.g., use of the Good War to justify later ones). Funny and smart.

Lies my teacher told me : everything your American history textbook got wrong Loewen, James W. New York : New Press, c1995 McH Stacks E175.85 .L64 1995 *** High school history textbooks

A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millenium by Chris Harman.

Parenti, Michael The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome (video interview).

The Untold History of the United States (McHenry E741 .S76 2011) by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick (also a TV series) (McHenry Media Ctr: DVD10093). video interview on Henry Wallace, almost president, who would not have dropped Atomic Bomb. (Summary and links). Extensive video interview with transcript.

Episode A: 1900-1920 - World War I, The Russian Revolution & Woodrow Wilson Episode B: 1920-1940 - Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin: The Battle of Ideas Season 1 Chapter 1: World War II Chapter 2: Roosevelt, Truman & Wallace Chapter 3: The Bomb Chapter 4: The Cold War: 1945–1950 Chapter 5: The '50s: Eisenhower, The Bomb & The Third World. Chapter 6: JFK: To The Brink Chapter 7: Johnson, Nixon & Vietnam: Reversal Of Fortune Chapter 8: Reagan, Gorbachev & Third World: Rise Of The Right Chapter 9: Bush & Clinton: Squandered Peace – New World Order Chapter 10: Bush & Obama: Age of Terror

Stone site

Environmental History: Collapse (summary) by Jared Diamond (UCLA), (celebrated author of Guns, Germs and Steel) seeks to understand why so many civilizations have been unable to avoid destroying the environment they depended upon. In this selection he summaries the reasons, which may also be involved in your issue. TEDtalk video. ****

Late Victorian Holocausts By Mike Davis.

The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future by Riane Eisler looks at how gender has structured culture of domination. Her new book rethinks the economy: The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics Link

Ned Ludd & Queen Mab: Machine-Breaking, Romanticism, and the Several Commons of 1811-12 Peter Linebaugh audio interview 2012. 1/27/14 audio interview. His more recent book,Stop, Thief! is on the appropriations of the commons also includes history, including a refugee from the Irish famine, captured by Iroquois and taken in by escaped slaves.

Changes in the Land by William Cronon was long the central text in the Core course, a pioneering work in eco-history, and it it still the best explanation of how we got where we are. These excerpts (requires course login) documents how Native Americans related to nature, and what happened when the market was introduced. Ch. 8 is the summary/conclusion. He was also wrote "Trouble with Wilderness," which set off a lively debate, which concludes here.

Atomic America by Todd Tucker. On January 3, 1961, nuclear reactor SL-1 exploded in rural Idaho, spreading radioactive contamination over thousands of acres and killing three men: John Byrnes, Richard McKinley, and Richard Legg. The Army blamed "human error" and a sordid love triangle. Though it has been overshadowed by the accident at Three Mile Island, SL-1 is the only fatal nuclear reactor incident in American history, and it holds serious lessons for a nation poised to embrace nuclear energy once again. See also Schlosser's Command and Control. Eric Schlosser, "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" author of Fastfood Nation. 11/13.

The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations by Brian Fagan.

Jeffrey Parker's Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (2013) *** also audio interview (starts 16 mins in). short text Q&A interview.

Objects

Food

NPR interview with Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, gives us a primer on the expansive history — and the endangered future — of this seedless, sexless fruit.

Uncommon Grounds: the History of Coffee and How it Transformed our World by Mark Pendergrast [(excerpts). UCSC S&E Stacks TX415 .P46 1999 See also Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts… by Murray Carpenter [http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=289750754interview.

Cod: A Biography of a Fish by Mark Kurlansky video interview.

Salt: A World History (Big History video excerpt).

A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage.

Spice: The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner.

Sugar: A Bittersweet History by Elizabeth Abbott (more recent and popular) Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Sidney W. Mintz (more scholarly).

Technology (see also Counter-History

James Burke's Knowledge Web has six degrees of things, people and ideas. my version has video games, punk rock, ethno-botany, zombies as well as UCSC.

Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White at Stanford video).

Oil: The Prize by Daniel Yergin also a PBS series.

Rubber: Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City By Greg Grandin. (Includes excerpt and audio interview with author).

Water: Cadillac Desert by Reisner, William , explores how crucial the development of dams were to the West. Introduction. Chapter 1 includes John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War officer who was the first to explore the Grand Canyon by boat. White speaks of regionalism, an idea pioneered by Powell. NPR audio**** highly recommended. video. The Water Fight That Inspired ‘Chinatown’ 5/12.