Big history back on the shelves

A recent article in Foreign Affairs by Yale historian Paul Kennedy reviews three books in the "world history" genre. The first book is by William Bernstein called A Splendid Exchange, which discusses on how trade and politico-military power have coincided "from ancient Sumer to the present day", but with a focus on classical antiquity and the Renaissance era. The second book, The Great Experiment by Strobe Talbott, is a kind of diplomatic history-cum-memoir which comes off quite nicely, at least according to Kennedy. The last is Days of Empire by Amy Chua, a up-and-coming law professor (or is she already there?) at Yale University. It's a classic chronology about "the rise and fall of empires", strung together around the thesis that a policy of inclusiveness, which she calls 'toleration' is a (the?) key to maintaining empires. Perhaps it is a sign of the times that our era of uncertainty engenders the publication of big-canvass books. As Kennedy says, "In an age of sound bites and the awful daily vision of human beings chattering into their cell phones as they hustle down the street, it is deeply satisfying that a small number of people still take the time to ponder and make connections between events over centuries."