For fun and the really really big picture, you might enjoy Maps of Time: An Intr

oduction to Big History, by David Christian. This book, in about 500 pages, cove
rs history from the Big Bang creation of the universe to some musings about the
future. Christian thinks about the big picture and when he gets to the human par
ts of history, he continues to take that viewpoint. What drives change?
While I'm on David Christian, I have to mention that everyone in my world histor
y class enjoyed his book, A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia. We onl
y read volume 1, which covers foraging and pastoral societies (nomadic herders)
up to the Mongol military empire of Chinggis Khan, so I can't say anything about
volume 2, which takes the story through the Soviet Union. As Christian notes,
because they diverge from urban based societies in many ways, studying pastoral
societies helps us to understand how our underlying principles of family life, s
ocial organization, commercial exchanges, and spiritual and ethical principles m
ight be shaped by our environment.
While Europe was in its "Dark Ages," the empires centering on the Indian Ocean w
orld and China were the powerhouses of culture and world trade. There are many g
reat reads on this period in world history. Hopefully, other Quorites will add
their own suggestions. For understanding what was going on in the non-European p
art of the world, I suggest the short book by K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civiliza
tion in the Indian Ocean, which covers that part of the world from about 700 A.D
. to 1750 A.D. This covers the Hindu caste system and the idea of the essential
inequality of humans, the Chinese empire with its idea of superiority, the spre
ad of Islam and the idea of the essential equality of mankind, the Turco-Mongol
barbarian military empires, and finally, the European arrival to the trading rou
tes by sea and their successful effort to dominate and control the trade routes
by state-supported naval power.