It is a big place but it is very small in terms of its universe. It was a long time, but in reality it passed as a single heartbeat in comparison to everything else that has happened since time began. Brown (education emerita, Dominican U.) ably takes advantage of the new focus on combining disciplines such as history, biology, physics, sociology and political science and a variety of theoretical ideas to describe the history of the world. She starts at the start, between 13.7 and 4.6 billion years ago, working through the long era sans humans, coming to advanced hunting and gathering on through to the current era of industrialization, making sense of disparate social, political and religious systems as she goes. The result is a remarkable treatment of complexity, which Brown manages to pull off without a hint of smugness. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)