Introduction: The guiding themes

Part I. Origins to the End of Antiquity

1. Humankind emerges: tools and toolmakers

2. The reign of the farmer

3. Pharaohs and engineers

4. Greeks bearing gifts

5. Alexandria and after

Part II. Thinking and Doing among the World's Peoples

6. The enduring East

7. The Middle Kingdom

8. Indus, Ganges, and beyond

9. The New World

Part III. Europe and the Solar System

10. Plows, stirrups, guns, and plagues

11. Copernicus incites a revolution

12. The crime and punishment of Galileo Galilei

13. "God said, 'Let Newton be!' "

Part IV. Science, Technology, and Industrial Civilization

14. Textiles, timber, coal, and steam

15. Legacies of revolution: from Newton to Einstein

16. Life itself

17. Toolmakers take command

18. The new Aristotelians

19. The bomb, the Internet and the genome

20. Under today's pharaohs

Afterword: The medium of history.