“This remains the best single attempt to theorize big history as a discipline that can link core concepts and paradigms across all historical disciplines, from cosmology to geology, from biology to human history.

With additional and updated material, the Second Edition also offers a fine introduction to the history of big history and a superb introductory survey to the big history story. Essential reading for anyone interested in a rapidly evolving new field of scholarship that links the sciences and the humanities into a modern, science-based origin story.”
David Christian, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

 

“Notable for its theoretical approach, this new Second Edition is both an indispensable contribution to the emerging big history narrative and a powerful university textbook. Spier defines words carefully, and recognizes the limits of current knowledge, aspects of his own clear thinking.”

Cynthia Brown, Emeritus, Dominican University of California, USA

 

 

 

“Spier takes us one important step forward in making big history accessible to all.  I look forward to the next, more fully illustrated and documented, step in this process.”

Journal of World History, 2012

 

“Narratives don’t come much grander than the current scientific view of the history of the Universe…  Spier is one of a small band of exponents of big history, the effort to put the whole story together in an academically rigorous way…  Personally, I think everyone should have access to this story, and I would put it at the heart of the national curriculum as well.”

Jon Turney in:Times Higher Education Supplement, 2010

 

“Brilliant.  It pushes the project of theorizing big history a lot further, in exactly the right way, alert to the dangers of over-theorizing or theorizing on too limited information. It will be a major contribution to the discipline.”
David Christian, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

 

“This book has convinced me not only that Big History is interesting and exciting, but has established a genuine intellectual basis for integrating historical knowledge, and historical method, with those of the natural world. This is a framework in which, ideally, all history should be investigated, taught and discussed.”
R.I. Moore, Emeritus Professor of History, Newcastle University, UK