World and Big History

The Lessons of History

“I recently reread The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant. It's a great little history book.”Naval Ravikant

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking

“Huntington's civilizational framework is one Dalio has cited as useful for thinking about the current world order — not as prediction but as a way to map the fault lines along which great-power competition tends to run.”Ray Dalio

The Better Angels of Our Nature

“The longer companion to Enlightenment Now. Naval has cited Pinker's evolutionary and historical account of declining violence as evidence that our intuitions about the world are systematically wrong in ways that have real consequences for how we act.”Naval Ravikant

World Order

“Kissinger's account of the Westphalian system and its modern fractures informs Dalio's geopolitical framing. He has discussed Kissinger's view that great-power stability requires shared legitimacy, not just balance of force, as directly relevant to the current moment.”Ray Dalio

Civilisation

“Here are the most exciting ones I can think of: Clark, Civilisation”Paul Graham

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

“The River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy”Ray Dalio

The End of History and the Last Man

“Fukuyama's thesis that liberal democracy represents the endpoint of ideological evolution is exactly the kind of consensus Thiel builds his career against. He has engaged with it publicly not to dismiss it but to argue that Fukuyama's endpoint may have arrived prematurely, and that the real contest between order and chaos is still open.”Peter Thiel

Fallen Leaves

“a book that historian Will Durant wrote in his 90s, a summation of his thoughts on the meaning of life at the end of his”Andrew Wilkinson

How Democracies Die

“Obama recommended this Harvard political scientists' comparative study on his 2018 list, calling it a bracing read for anyone worried about democratic erosion. Levitsky and Ziblatt examine how elected leaders in Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela, and Peru undermined democratic norms from within, often without a single dramatic rupture.”Barack Obama