‘A fascinating journey through life, the universe and everything.’

The greatest stumbling block in condensing billions of years of history is making it simplified without becoming simplistic. Baker, a history and science writer, handles that obstacle with aplomb. Here are just over 200 pages covering the Big Bang to the present, and even postulating the Earth’s possible future.

Everything begins with the Big Bang. Baker acknowledges the impossibility of laypeople trying to fathom the physics of the vastness of the universe emerging from ‘nothing’. His rider that human minds are hardwired to experience everything in relation to time and that neither time nor space existed prior to the singularity, helps. It’s difficult not to ponder what was there before the Big Bang. (This ensures an existential brain-freeze, so please just accept the physics.)

Baker’s humour is evident in his writing. His disappointment at humans having chimpanzees as common ancestors, rather than bonobos – we could have had a much greater predilection for sex than for violence – is noteworthy. Timelines are also included. The asteroid impact causing the extinction of dinosaurs is well known. There have been many others however, including the almost-extinction of early humans. It’s estimated that as few as 10 000 survived. Extinction events generally occur every 100 million years – we’re not due yet, although environmental destruction is not limited to asteroids or super-volcanos.

The upward trend for innovation has ensured that we’ve been at the forefront of complexity within the universe. This trend can’t continue forever, as we’re already discovering, so his final sentence is worth repeating: ‘Be brave, be good to each other.’

Reviewed by Bob Moore

See all books in the ‘Shortest History’ series

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Baker is a history and science writer for SimonWhistler.com. Holding the world’s first PhD in Big History, he studies under David Christian. He has delivered award-winning lectures at Macquarie University and the University of Amsterdam and is a visiting lecturer at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. David wrote the YouTube series Crash Course Big History, hosted by John and Hank Green in partnership with the Gates Big History Project.