Reddit mentions of The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community; with a Retrospective Essay

I'm trying to find links to support a claim that bipedalism is significantly less efficient (in terms of COT or Cost of Transport, defined as the amount of energy used to move a given amount a given distance) than four-legged ambulation, but in the meantime:

The relative efficiency of horses vs. people is not really germane to the role of horses in human history. William H. McNeill, in his seminal The Rise of the West spells out the impact that wave after wave of horse-riding nomads from the Eurasian steppe had on the history of Europe, Asia and Africa.

What made these nomads so unstoppable was their possession of horses, which were the mightiest military weapon humans had until very recently (not, incidentally, because horses let their owners charge into masses of foot soldiers and swing away with a sword or ax, but because they let their owners shoot arrows and then run away). To the nomads horses were cheap, since they had access to virtually limitless grazing lands. To the settled peoples they preyed upon, horses were an unaffordable luxury, since they had to be fed the same food as humans (not really - it's actually that land used to grow food for horses can't be used to grow food for people too).

As a result, the horse-riding (or chariot-riding in an earlier period) nomads could pretty much do as they pleased and go where they wished. Most of the Chinese dynasties were founded by them, as was the Ottoman Empire and many others, and Europe was savaged by them repeatedly (McNeill proposed that this constant pressure from steppe nomads is what led to the feudal system in Europe, since the system supported locally-based, horse-riding warriors that were able to respond quickly and successfully fend off mounted raiders).

TL;DR: Bipedalism is less efficient than quadripedalism [citation needed]. Horses are part of history because they can carry (or pull) us and they eat grass, not because they're efficient.

The Rise of The West by William Mcneill. A grand narrative history of the entire human civilization. Very humane, thoughtful, and relevant (I am reading it for the second time these days).

The Rise of The West is probably the best book on general history I've seen anywhere:

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-West-History-Community-Retrospective/dp/0226561410/ref=sr_1_36?keywords=history+of+west&qid=1572706758&s=books&sr=1-36

It does not talk specifically about the Russian revolution that much, but it goes very deep into analysing how the modern world became what it is, starting at the very beginning, at the time of primal hunters, and going all the way to the modern times. It is not an easy book to swallow, and you have to do a lot of thinking and reading suggested sources to start getting the whole picture. But the central message is this: very early societies split into two groups, free trade-based and crony market-based, and that split sent ripples throughout the history, affecting the evolution of every single society profoundly.

The author is absolutely impartial in his analysis, and while he demonstrates that free trade-based systems have significant advantages over crony market-based ones, he never really states it explicitly, letting the reader form their own opinion. This is another aspect making this book so amazing: no opinion is ever forced on you. The author lays down facts, states possible interpretations of them and lets you judge which interpretations are more reasonable.

In terms of the writing style, I would say that this book is somewhere between academic and popular writing. If you are a history major, the writing will probably seem a bit light to you, but you still can get a lot of information and ideas out of this book. And if you've never read a history book before, then the material might be a bit challenging, but you absolutely can read this book recreationally, as long as you don't mind putting in some effort.

This book is HUGE, over 800 pages, so don't expect to finish it in one weekend. :) But if you do go through all the material, your knowledge and understanding of history will have grown dramatically.

I'm not in any way a historian so I was waiting to see what others said, but I would have suggested The Rise of the West by W. H. McNeill. Admittedly it's quite old (my edition was published in 1963) but I was wondering if proper historians would think of me as a dribbling shaved ape if I said I was impressed with it.