The Story of Us, Putting Time into Perspective - Tim Urban. A series of blog posts interpreting human history, and a post on the effects of our subjective understanding of time.
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson. “Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you.”
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari. A detailed account of human evolution and more recent economic and technological developments.
The Fall of Civilizations - Podcast. Each episode focuses on one civilization at a time, exploring its history from its beginning to its end.
The History of Our World in 18 Minutes - David Christian. A visual TED talk summarizing our long-term history.
The Vital Question - Nick Lane. Explores crucial dynamics that shaped our evolution.
What Happened Before History?, How Evolution Works, Time - Kurzgesagt. Illustrative explainer videos on human origins.
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking. A physics-focused history of time.
Asimov’s Chronology of the World - Isaac Asimov. A dated but well-written account of our long-term history.