Reddit mentions of The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself

The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin
http://www.amazon.com/The-Discoverers-Daniel-J-Boorstin/dp/0394726251

This doesn't actually answer your question but if this is a topic you're interested in, you should consider checking out The Discoverers. Daniel J. Boorstin covers the history of clock making and why it rose to such prominence in some countries and not others, and he places it in a greater context of innovation and technology and man's attempts to understand the world around him. It can be a bit dry at times, but it is thorough and the topics at hand are very interesting.

Granted, I'm no expert, and it's only one, non-primary source. But I'd say it's worth the read.

The Discoverers, Daniel Boorstin - http://www.amazon.com/Discoverers-Daniel-J-Boorstin/dp/0394726251

I know just what you mean. The other book I'm currently reading is The Discoverers and I hit the same point, where the beginning was really engaging, but long passages with strings of names and dates don't quite do it for me.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (an Oxford professor of history) has written several books you might like.

The World - A History, a two volume work, is very well regarded in teaching circles. I have heard great things about this book, but I haven't read it myself.

I have read his Millenium - A History of the Past One Thousand Years and can highly recommend it. Looking at Amazon though, it looks like it might be out of print. He also wrote Humankind - A Brief History.

A Terrible Beauty - The People and Ideas that Shaped the Modern Mind. A History by Peter Watson may also be of interest; though it focuses exclusively on the 20th century. In it, the author attempts to provide a history of the twentieth century that does not focus on 'wars and dates', and that addresses an alarming lack of focus in many recent history books. As Watson puts it himself in the Introduction "In one recent 700-page history of the first third of the twentieth century, for example, there is no mention of relativity, of Henri Matisse or Gregor Mendel, no Ernest Rutherford, James Joyce, or Marcel Proust. No George Orwell, W.E.B. Du Bois, or Margaret Mead, no Oswald Spengler or Virgina Woolf. No Leo Szilard or Leo Hendrik Baekeland, no James Chadwick or Paul Ehrlich. No Sinclair Lewis and therefore no Babbit." (He was referring to Martin Gilbert's The Twentieth Century - Volume 1, 1900 - 1933). I highly recommend this book. Another example, but of a far more personal nature, would be Clive James's Cultural Amnesia, a fascinating collection of biographical essays on some of the 20th century's greatest thinkers, musicians, artists etc. James is justifiably famous (in the UK at least) for his prose and erudition, as well as his humourous critical columns.

Finally, the much lauded trilogy by Daniel Boorstin sounds like a good fit too. The Discovers, The Seekers and The Creators are excellent. Personally, Boorstin's style is not my favourite, but there is no arguing the value of these books; superb works of learning.

If you want more recommendations, just ask. :)

EDIT: Kenneth Clark's famous TV series Civilization may also interest you. It is primarily a history of western civilization and, by implication, a history of western art & culture. It's also from the 1970's so it is considered a little dated in some circles; Clarke certainly shows his western bias. But nevertheless, it is wonderful TV, remarkably interesting, well produced (though not HD!) and a fascinating subject.

The Discoverers, by Daniel Boorstin. It's the greatest book I've ever read, and is surprisingly readable, given the breadth of subject matter.

The Discoverers

I don't want to discourage you from reading my fellow redditors' proposals, but consider this: Do yourself a favor and don't try to cram your head full of dates and facts, but rather try to get a look at the bigger picture. After all, humans have been around for a few hundred millennia, and only obsessing on the last couple centuries, and then on minute details, is kind of short-sighted and a sure-fire way of getting frustrated.

Millennium takes a nice look at the last thousand years and does a nice job of boggling your mind at that by taking your eyes off Western history for a change.
Anything by Jared Diamond will help you get an original look at how the cogs of civillizations turn.
The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin is also a fascinating read that highlights mankind's continuing search for new horizons, new knowledge and new conquests.

Rats, Lice and History - Hans Zinsser

The Discovers - Daniel Boorstein

Connections - James Burke

The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould

Control of Nature - John McPhee

May I suggest that you read The Oxford Annotated Bible.

Once you are done with that ... may I suggest

• The Discoverers
  
• The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination
  
• The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World Knowledge
  
  
  All three of these books dissect imagination, creativity and the human existence. I encourage anyone who has been a JW to read these books. I was raised from infancy to be a JW and I struggled to understand mankind's history, achievements and appreciation to where we are today.
  
  Mind you ... this is a meal literary Guinness with a steak dinner vs Bible is just a wine spritzer and salad.

Daniel Boorstin writes very well about this. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0394726251/ref=pd_aw_sbs_b_1

Great Question. I was thinking about my own history. I wish there was a good single Codex, like handing out Bibles. I'd say read books broadly, read well, listen to debate, study the free MOOC courses online like edx.org. Always have a consciousness above what you are listening/reading that takes the mental exercise to evaluate: what works and what flaws there are in things, even ideas you love. I think books on Science history are especially helpful, like Byson's A Short History of nearly Everything or Boortin's The Discoverers

The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin blew me away when I read it 20 years ago or so -- A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself.

one of the best books I have ever read. The Discoverers

The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin is a really great history of science read. It manages to be very thought provoking without being too dense- can't recommend it enough.

Boorstin's The Discoverers. http://www.amazon.com/Discoverers-Daniel-J-Boorstin/dp/0394726251

It's a history of science and exploration, with (IIRC) just enough reference to war and politics so you get some context (or at least have your interest piqued). It is formatted as a collection of relatively brief essays, with each essay about a person, place or significant deveopment, so it is good for bathroom reading, or for reading straight through.

Also, Grun's Timetables of History makes a good companion for this or any other reading you do.

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Timetables-of-History/Bernard-Grun/9780743270038

It really is just a very large table (hundreds of pages) divided by era and year along the vertical axis, and region along the horizontal axis, so you can see the major events in the world around a specific time. It includes Asian and African history, so it is more than Western European/American-centric. It is NOT very detailed -- its goal is to provide broad context.

Take a look at the book "The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself" by Daniel J Boorstin. It lists the history of discovery in all aspects of knowledge, listed roughly chronologically.

http://www.amazon.com/Discoverers-Daniel-J-Boorstin/dp/0394726251

I think the very first discovery described in the book is the most important and sometimes too easily forgotten. It is the discovery of time. In the beginning, the cyclic rising of Sirius every year allowed the ancient Egyptians to plans crops meaningfully, and those priests who knew of the phenomenon could "predict" this annual flooding of the Nile, and given high status in society. In studying time, we see the germination of religion (the predictors of the floods were the priests of their day, who yielded immense power over their "ability" to discern meaning from the stars), control over nature (planting crops in meaningful ways allowed sedentary life, and excess food production leading to development of writing and mathematics), and the planning of events in advance (We'll go to war in a month!). The history of how people discovered and formalized the year, months week, days, hours, and seconds is to trace the progress of human civilization itself.

The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin is the best book on the history of both science and exploration ever written. Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos is the best work on physics for a general audience I've seen lately.