Big History
2. 
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by:
Jared Diamond
4.04 avg rating — 445,073 ratings 
5. 
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by:
Jared Diamond
3.93 avg rating — 73,875 ratings 
9. 
Big History: The Big Bang, Life On Earth, And The Rise Of Humanity
by:
David Christian
4.42 avg rating — 553 ratings 
11. 
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
by:
Charles C. Mann
4.05 avg rating — 93,187 ratings 12. 
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
by:
Steven Pinker
4.16 avg rating — 29,271 ratings 
13. 
The Removable Root Cause of Cancers and other Chronic Diseases : The Effort Theory of Evolution, Chronic Diseases and Extinction
by:
Paul Ola
3.70 avg rating — 27 ratings 15. 
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
by:
David W. Anthony
3.99 avg rating — 3,775 ratings 16. 
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
by:
Sam Kean
3.93 avg rating — 54,825 ratings 17. 
Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future
by:
Ian Morris
4.11 avg rating — 5,829 ratings 18. 
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions
by:
Karen Armstrong
4.04 avg rating — 3,961 ratings 
21. 
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
by:
David Graeber
4.19 avg rating — 24,328 ratings 22. 
The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions
by:
Peter Brannen
4.29 avg rating — 5,875 ratings 
24. 
The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
by:
Joseph Henrich
4.12 avg rating — 3,970 ratings 25. 
The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
by:
Nick Lane
4.18 avg rating — 5,766 ratings 
26. 
The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection
by:
Tamim Ansary
4.29 avg rating — 1,166 ratings 28. 
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World
by:
Steve Brusatte
4.21 avg rating — 38,331 ratings 29. 
The Cartoon History of the Universe I, Vol. 1-7: From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great (The Cartoon History of the Universe, #1)
by:
Larry Gonick
4.27 avg rating — 3,550 ratings 29. 
The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome
by:
Susan Wise Bauer
4.11 avg rating — 6,408 ratings 
32. 
A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters
by:
Henry Gee
4.05 avg rating — 2,896 ratings 
36. 
The Illustrated A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell
by:
Stephen Hawking
4.31 avg rating — 10,052 ratings 37. 
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes
by:
Adam Rutherford
4.03 avg rating — 11,640 ratings 
39. 
A Most Improbable Journey: A Big History of Our Planet and Ourselves
by:
Walter Álvarez
3.93 avg rating — 347 ratings 
41. 
Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World
by:
Marcia Bjornerud
4.07 avg rating — 1,658 ratings 42. 
Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World
by:
Mark Kurlansky
3.92 avg rating — 24,362 ratings 42. 
Once & Future Giants: What Ice Age Extinctions Tell Us About the Fate of Earth's Largest Animals
by:
Sharon Levy
3.97 avg rating — 210 ratings 42. 
Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time 3.90 avg rating — 457 ratings
42. 
Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
by:
Christopher Ryan
3.98 avg rating — 31,323 ratings 
48. 
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
by:
Daniel Immerwahr
4.46 avg rating — 19,123 ratings 49. 
The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire: Why Our Species Is on the Edge of Extinction
by:
Henry Gee
3.75 avg rating — 204 ratings 50. 
Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies
by:
Cesar A. Hidalgo
3.97 avg rating — 1,477 ratings 
53. 
The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone
by:
Edward Dolnick
4.20 avg rating — 2,093 ratings 
54. 
Snowball Earth: The Story of the Great Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life as We Know It
by:
Gabrielle Walker
3.99 avg rating — 415 ratings 
57. 
Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century, Vol. 1: The Structures of Everyday Life
by:
Fernand Braudel
4.35 avg rating — 1,711 ratings 58. 
What Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches 4.13 avg rating — 7,501 ratings
59. 
The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
by:
Jared Diamond
3.78 avg rating — 10,885 ratings 60. 
The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Volume I
by:
Fernand Braudel
4.33 avg rating — 1,283 ratings 
62. 
Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830
by:
Bernard Bailyn
3.91 avg rating — 11 ratings 
62. 
The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet
by:
Robert M. Hazen
4.24 avg rating — 3,071 ratings 
66. 
The First North Americans: An Archaeological Journey
by:
Brian M. Fagan
3.63 avg rating — 87 ratings 
67. 
On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking's Final Theory
by:
Thomas Hertog
4.07 avg rating — 2,189 ratings 
70. 
71. 
In the Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000-Year History of American Indians
by:
Jake Page
3.96 avg rating — 417 ratings 
73. 
After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC
by:
Steven Mithen
4.08 avg rating — 1,507 ratings 73. 
Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
by:
Neil Shubin
4.04 avg rating — 28,100 ratings 75. 
Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe
by:
Roger Penrose
3.93 avg rating — 2,472 ratings 75. 
The Intimate Bond: How Animals Shaped Human History
by:
Brian M. Fagan
3.52 avg rating — 251 ratings 
80. 
Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History
by:
Lewis Dartnell
4.17 avg rating — 3,947 ratings 
82. 
The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
by:
Sean Carroll
4.18 avg rating — 9,959 ratings 84. 
The Monkey's Voyage: How Improbable Journeys Shaped the History of Life
by:
Alan de Queiroz
3.78 avg rating — 324 ratings 
86. 
Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins
by:
Steve Olson
3.94 avg rating — 1,054 ratings 88. 
The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples
by:
Tim Flannery
4.09 avg rating — 922 ratings 
90. 
Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth
by:
Richard Fortey
4.08 avg rating — 3,321 ratings 91. 
The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of Our World
by:
Peter D. Ward
4.08 avg rating — 306 ratings 
93. 
Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins
by:
Carl Zimmer
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 227 ratings 94. 
Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States
by:
James C. Scott
4.13 avg rating — 4,579 ratings 95. 
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
by:
Carl Sagan
4.34 avg rating — 38,703 ratings 96. 
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Universe: And Our Place Within It
by:
Andrew Newsam
4.30 avg rating — 54 ratings 97. 
The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve 4.25 avg rating — 1,522 ratings
98. 
99. 
Leaving the Wild: The Unnatural History of Dogs, Cats, Cows, and Horses
by:
Gavin Ehringer
3.73 avg rating — 83 ratings 