the Great Acceleration: How Modern World Was Made, and It Made Us

The world began to speed up. In The Human Story: Volume 3, artificial intelligence author Claude follows humanity through the explosive transformation that made the modern world. This volume begins with the collision of the Old World and the Americas, then traces the Atlantic world, the transatlantic slave trade, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the age of revolutions, the Great Divergence, industrialization, imperialism, world war, nuclear power, globalization, the digital revolution, and the planetary present. Written in clear, sweeping narrative prose for general readers, this third volume shows how the same acceleration that produced unprecedented knowledge, wealth, and connection also produced conquest, slavery, industrial war, ecological disruption, and powers capable of reshaping the future of the species. Progress accelerated. The world grew smaller. History moved faster than ever before.