Prologue

I can already tell I love this book. Not only does the text use concise, to the point language, (unlike any other history book I have ever read) but the way the information is revealed makes it memorable. For instance, "The Three Cs of World History". Time and time again I have taken college courses that require so much memorization. Basically what I do is memorize the material to pass the quiz or test but if I don't need to apply it to something or explain it back, what is the use of keeping this information? I feel like almost immediately the information leaves my brain in half of the time it took me to study it. Reading something in a history book however that takes terms such as "changes" and spins them not only into helping me understand the past but also relating the term to the current helps me not only remember this term but also the usage.

As for a couple other things that struck me in the reading, I think it is insane that someone or a group of people decided to turn the whole history of the universe into a cosmic calender. I think it is brilliant, as long as it's accurate that is, (or accurate as far as we can tell). I think the fact that the writer took the whole history of the human species and turned it into a paragraph is unreal. I can't image condensing something so vast into literally five inches.

Lastly I couldn't end this blog without mentioning Voltaire's quote, "This little globe, nothing more than a point, rolls in space like so many other globes; we are lost in this immensity" (Strayer, xliii). I hope we discuss how people interpret this quote.