The Big Picture - Macrohistories

Whereas microhistories zoom in on a topic, putting it under the microscope to study every detail from every angle, macrohistories zoom out. These are the "big" histories, the very long view, studying the past on a grand scale. Macrohistories do not focus on the individual, but on whole civilizations, and changes over centuries, even millennia. If you are a "big picture" person, these are the books for you!

Updated July 7, 2026
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Saskatchewan Information & Library Services Consortium Regina Public Library
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The Big Picture - Macrohistories

Whereas microhistories zoom in on a topic, putting it under the microscope to study every detail from every angle, macrohistories zoom out. These are the "big" histories, the very long view, studying the past on a grand scale. Macrohistories do not focus on the individual, but on whole civilizations, and changes over centuries, even millennia. If you are a "big picture" person, these are the books for you!

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Atlantic : great sea battles, heroic discoveries, titanic storms, and a vast ocean of a million stories
Winchester, Simon.
Paper Book
"Variably genial, cautionary, lyrical, admonitory, terrifying, horrifying and inspiring...A lifetime of thought, travel, reading, imagination and memory inform this affecting account." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Blending history and anecdote, geography and reminiscence, science and...
Cosmos
Sagan, Carl
Paper Book
The best-selling science book ever published in the English language, COSMOS is a magnificent overview of the past, present, and future of science. Brilliant and provocative, it traces today's knowledge and scientific methods to their historical roots, blending science and philosophy in a wholly...
The dawn of everything : a new history of humanity
Graeber, David
Paper Book
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution--from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality--and...
Guns, germs, and steel : the fates of human societies
Diamond, Jared M.
Paper Book
In this "artful, informative, and delightful (book)" ("New York Review of Books"), Diamond offers a convincing explanation of the way the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Photos. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Homo deus A Brief History of Tomorrow.
Harari, Yuval N.
Ebook
Official U.S. edition with full color illustrations throughout. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original,...
Nexus a brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI
Harari, Yuval N.
Ebook
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world. "Strikingly original . . . A historian whose arguments operate on the scale of millennia has managed to capture the...
Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind
Harari, Yuval Noah.
Ebook
#1 New York Times Bestseller * New York Times Readers' Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21st Century * The Summer Reading Pick for President Barack Obama and Bill Gates Official U.S. edition with full color illustrations throughout. From renowned historian...
Why nations fail The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
Acemoglu, Daron.
Ebook
NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, "who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country's prosperity" "A wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through...
The World : A Family History
Montefiore, Simon Sebag.
Ebook
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A magisterial world history unlike any other that tells the story of humanity through the one thing we all have in common: families * From the author of The Romanovs A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, Smithsonian
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