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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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
This visually stunning book with over 250 full-color illustrations, many of them never before published, is based on Carl Sagan’s thirteen-part television series. Told with Sagan’s remarkable ability to make scientific ideas both comprehensible and exciting,Cosmosis about science in its...
DAWN OF EVERYTHING
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
"Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history."--Bill Gates In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the...
Homo deus : a brief history of tomorrow
Harari, Yuval N.
Paper Book
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,...
Land : how the hunger for ownership shaped the modern world
Winchester, Simon
Paper Book
"In many ways, Land combines bits and pieces of many of Winchester's previous books into a satisfying, globe-trotting whole. . . . Winchester is, once again, a consummate guide."--Boston Globe The author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and...
The history of money : a story of humanity
McWilliams, David
Paper Book
"Learned, lively and often irreverent, David McWilliams''s The History of Money is rich with surprising details about currency, then and now." --The New York Times In this fresh, eye-opening global history, economist David McWilliams charts the...
Nexus : a brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI
Harari, Yuval N.
Paper Book
#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...
Pacific silicon chips and surfboards, coral reefs and atom bombs, brutal dictators, fading empires, and the coming collision of the world's superpowers
Winchester, Simon
Ebook
One of Library Journal's 10 Best Books of 2015 Following his acclaimed Atlantic and The Men Who United the States, New York Times bestselling author Simon Winchester offers an enthralling biography of the Pacific Ocean and its role in the modern world, exploring our relationship with this...
Proto : How One Ancient Language Went Global
Spinney, Laura.
Paper Book
Named a Best Book of 2025 by the Guardian and Scientific American "The story of how one language left the steppes of Ukraine and became the earth's dominant language family has become clearer and more exciting than ever before. Hooray for a book where the...
Sapiens : a brief history of humankind
Harari, Yuval N.
Paper Book
#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.
CD
"Brilliant and engagingly written, " Why Nations Fail "answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? "Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of...
The World : A Family History
Montefiore, Simon Sebag.
Paper Book
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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