Origin Story: A Big History of Everything by David Christian
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Bracing Micro and Macro Views from a Mountain Top After reading Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (1885), which focuses mostly on Grant’s experience and understanding of the Civil War, I decided to try a different kind of history, one that casts a wider and more objective view than the history of an individual or a war or a country or an era or a world: David Christian’s Origin Story: A Big History of Everything (2018). Christian teaches history via a series of “thresholds,” critical turning points in the “Big History of Everything,” starting with the Big Bang (13.8 billion years ago), the first stars (13.2 billion years ago), new elements (13.2 billion years ago), and our sun (4.5 billion years ago); working forwards through life on earth (3.8 billion years ago), the first large organisms (600 million years ago), the mass extinction of the dinosaurs (65 million years ago), Homo erectus (2 million years ago), Homo sapiens (200,000 years ago), the first farming (10,000 years ago), the first agrarian civilizations and cities (5,000 years ago), and the Fossil-fuels revolution (200 years ago); and concluding with a look at the future, the death of the sun (4.5 billion years from now) and the darkening of the universe (gazillions of years from now). The last part, speculating on what is likely to happen if we continue our current trend of unsustainable growth, overuse of energy resources, and global warming and the chances of our being able to adopt a more stable and cooperative approach to growth, energy, and the biosphere, etc., is necessary reading. The book as a whole is bracing in its micro and macro visions, for it reminds us of how miraculous life is (dependent on a set of “Goldilocks conditions” or rare perfect chances), how similar and related all organisms are (no matter how different they may superficially seem), and how tiny we and our earth and sun and galaxy are in the larger scheme of things. Throughout, Christian explains complicated concepts simply and engagingly. We learn about how atoms are made, how molecules bond, how prokaryotes and eukaryotes differ, how photosynthesis made an oxygen boom later reined in by respiration, the role played by the molten core of the earth in plate tectonics and the surface temperature of the world, why foraging humans turned to farming and how the biosphere and humanity changed as a result, how erosion cycles carbon back into the earth, what will happen if (when?) the ice of the poles melts, how the fossil fuel revolution came about and how it has changed human civilizations, how stars are born and live and die, how black holes are formed and behave, and more and more and more. The book relates what scientists currently know about such things and how and when they came to know it and who first came to know it, and so on. Sometimes Christian’s view “from a mountaintop instead of from the ground” can almost seem almost too detached when relating things like slavery and the exploitation of indigenous people, but overall it really makes you appreciate the miracle of living on our earth in the universe. Jamie Jackson’s reading of the audiobook is fine. View all my reviews
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Jefferson Peters
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