Publisher's Synopsis
Robert J Stone pulls no punches. Humanity is currently on a one-way ride to oblivion, he says, and this is how it happened. One thing led to another. This is Big History. It begins at the beginning and goes until now - from the big bang until just yesterday. In just under 250 pages, it is a rapid ride through captivating terrain. More precisely, it is an effort to construct a coherent and comprehensive narrative account of the unfolding of existence in which each of us can find our origins, our identities, our dignities and tragedies and perhaps something of our commonalities. Stone is attempting to furnish the first draught of a plausible and universally acceptable narrative explanation for how humanity's current state of affairs might have come about. He warns us in the introduction that all historical narrative is fiction parading as truth, and then he plows ahead, seeking to transcend the bias of nation, culture, ideology and faith by calling on Darwin and Einstein to frame his narrative in the context of scientific rationalism. While the book opens somewhat like A Little History of the World for grownups, it quickly addresses a number of key themes which it follows to the end. These include gender relations, social structures, economics, science, technology, culture, art, philosophy, ideology, environment and conflict. Stone's description of the human predicament is far from optimistic. The only chance to avoid extinction, he says, is to become a single, collectively rational, cohesive, inclusive, just and sustainable global humanity. And while that is the only realistic option left, if we can manage it, everything else just might fall into place.
