All of this in just over 300 pages of captivating prose that weaves together innumerable insights from the sciences, arts and humanities. This is a wonderful achievement - Carlo Rovelli * author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time * Origin Story is a majestic distillation of our current understanding of the birth of the universe, of the solar system, of the oceans, of mountains and minerals, of all life on earth and of the driving dynamics of human culture and achievement. In Origin Story, he elegantly weaves evidence and insights from many scientific and historical disciplines into a single, accessible historical narrative - Bill Gates In Origin Story, David Christian has found a spectacular way to use history to put order in the entire set of our knowledge about the world. This is a brief history of the universe, and an excellent one * Wall Street Journal * I have long been a fan of David Christian. Superb - Gerard Degroot * The Times * long-haul science with wit and oomph * Nature * Christian tells this story very well, providing, in effect, a short course in modern science. The processes it describes are all familiar, but I'd never seen them explained with such clarity and verve. remarkably cogent and compelling history of everything * Washington Post * Rather like the Big Bang, the book is awe-inspiring. If you read one book this year, make it this one - Fareed Zakaria, CNN A journey through billions of years that nails home the point: Life is a miracle.

Panoramic in scope and thrillingly told, Origin Story reveals what we learn about human existence when we consider it from a universal scale. This global origin story is one that we could only begin to tell recently, thanks to the underlying unity of modern knowledge.

This last mega-innovation gave us an energy bonanza that brought huge benefits to mankind, yet also threatens to shake apart everything we have created. He traces how, during eight key thresholds, the right conditions have allowed new forms of complexity to arise, from stars to galaxies, Earth to homo sapiens, agriculture to fossil fuels.

How did we get from the Big Bang to today's staggering complexity, in which seven billion humans are connected into networks powerful enough to transform the planet? And why, in comparison, are our closest primate relatives reduced to near-extinction?īig History creator David Christian gives the answers in a mind-expanding cosmological detective story told on the grandest possible scale. This is the epic story of the universe and our place in it, from 13.8 billion years ago to the remote future

Origin Story by David Christian