Big History, Small World It is the first book about "big history" written for high school students. It fits neatly with the free curriculum available at the Big History Project, cofounded by Professor David Christian and Bill Gates. It's also ideal for the general reader who shares Bill Gates's fascination with this new blend of history and science.

Big history is a whole new approach to history, pioneered by David Christian and other leading scholars. Their colleague Cynthia Stokes Brown wrote this book to make the subject more personal and engaging. This book is not formatted as a traditional textbook, although it can easily be used as one. Each chapter has questions on the frontier of knowledge, as well as suggestions of how the content applies directly to the reader, to answer the perennial question: "Why do I have to learn this?" There are illustrations, charts, diagrams, a glossary and timeline, and short biographies of scientists and historians who have been influential in developing big history.

Big History, Small World is organized into twelve chapters. In the first chapter, Brown discusses the scientific method. In the last chapter she discusses the different ways people interpret big history and find meaning in it. The other ten chapters are based on eight major turning points, or thresholds, in the cosmic story. One threshold, the emergence of life, gets two chapters, while a discussion of the future fills chapter eleven.