Waves of Global Change uses a holistic approach to understanding our human history that offers a lively and clear alternative synthesis. While concentrating on a panoramic history of our human species, this imaginative insight into our historical process integrates our human story within physical and biological history spanning a broad sweep of time from the big bang to the present. Using a holistic or systems approach in which events and actions across time and space are intricately interdependent with all affecting and interacting with each other. The forces that create the universe, life on earth, and shape our human story are arranged into five interconnected themes—paradox, interdependence, creative and destructive forces, change and continuity, and commonalities and diversity.

Common comparative patterns of human behavior are woven into a rich mosaic that forms the core connection linking our past, present, and future. The five common patterns of human behavior – Relationship to Nature: Ecosystem Patterns; Ways of Living: Techno-economic Patterns; Human Networks: Social Patterns; Organizing Order: Political Patterns; and Human Expressions: Cultural Patterns -- are illuminated by using an interdisciplinary perspective that draws the broadest picture of humankind. Our human survey, in turn, is told through five colorful, metaphoric waves -- communal, agricultural, urban, modern, and global -- each having distinct qualities and patterns. Why and in what ways humans developmentally change is explored in each wave.

Now is a critical juncture in our human history.  At this point in time our human species is confronted with a bewildering array of paths from which to choose, from widespread globalization to a return to traditional ways.  It is my hope that with this holistic understanding of the past, more viable and sustainable paths for future life will be chosen.  If a destructive path is selected, the ever-present theme of extinction and civilizational collapse looms over our species with the possibility that our present way of life could self-destruct, as has repeatedly happened in the past.  But hopefully we can learn from the past and choose sensible and creative paths for our future that will allow us to continue and shape a long, fulfilling, and nurturing existence for life on earth.  This world history is written with the hope of making a contribution to a more promising future.