San Diego State's David Christian, the author of Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (2004), makes his case in"What's the Use of ‘Big History'?" Since 1989, he says, historians in Australia, the United States, and the Netherlands have stepped way back in time and way out in space for a different vantage on history. Here, for instance, is the website for Fred Spiers' Big History program in the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Christian notes that he first began teaching Big History in a 13 week semester, that it covered an average of a billion years a week, and that human beings didn't occur in it until the 4th or 5th week of the course.

Randy Kennedy,"Revising Art History's Big Book: Who's In and Who Comes Out," New York Times, 7 March, features changes that will appear in the new edition of Janson's History of Art.

Peter Stanford,"Forget New Age, Let's Go Axial Age," Independent, 7 March, reviews Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation: The World in the Time of Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, and Jeremiah.

Jonathan Yardley reviews Frank T. Kryza's The Race for Timbuktu: In Search of Africa's City of Gold for the Washington Post, 5 March.

"The Terror Last Time," New Yorker, 13 March, is Caleb Crain's terrific review of James Green's Death in the Haymarket. At his blog, Steamboats Are Ruining Everything, Crain reviews internet resources for the Haymarket affair. Don't miss the period recordings of"Annie Laurie" and the"Workers' Marseillaise" from UC, Santa Barbara's Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project. Thanks to Alfredo Perez at Political Theory Daily Review for the tip.

Elaine Showalter,"In the Age of Awards," TLS, 3 March, reviews James English, The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards and the Circulation of Cultural Value. Thanks to Peter Stothard for the tip.