Cranston Public Library

"Famed geologist Walter Alvarez expands our view of human history by revealing the cosmic, geologic, and evolutionary forces that have shaped us. Big History, the field that studies the entire known past of our universe to give context to human existence, has so far been the domain of historians. In A Most Improbable Journey, geologist Walter Alvarez--best known for his 'Impact Theory' explaining dinosaur extinction--makes a compelling case for a...

"Human life has been repeatedly transformed by certain key technologies, each of which has triggered a profound metamorphosis. The fabrication of weapons, the mastery of fire, and the technologies of clothing and shelter transformed the human body, enabling us to walk upright, shed our body hair, and migrate out of tropical Africa into temperate climates. Symbolic communication changed human evolution from a slow biological process into a fast cultural...

"From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age. Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, [this book] shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative. Many thousands of years ago, when we existed...