THIS FLEETING WORLD

A great historian can make clear the connections between the first Homo sapiens and today's version of the species, and a great storyteller can make those connections come alive. David Christian is both.
Professor Christian and his Big History Project, co-founded with Bill Gates, has received massive attention in recent months. THE FLEETING WORLD: A Short History of Humanity, covers all of history from the origins of the universe to the perplexing, exciting world we know today.
Gates's discovery of David Christian and "Big History" was a cover story in the New York Times Magazine and Christian's TED talk has been watched 5 million times. Read about him, and the project, and the reception of his work amongst global leaders, at
http://ideas.ted.com/david-christians-big-history-gets-much-bigger/.

In January 2015, Professor Christian was again at Davos for the annual World Economic Forum. He was introduced by Al Gore.

David Christian is a professor of world history at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and co-founder, with Bill Gates, of the Big History Project. In 1989, Christian began teaching the first course on big history, an interdisciplinary field that examines history starting with the Big Bang