Earth Transformed by Frankopan is a nice recent addition to the genre of big history. I found it incredibly well sourced, and devoid of grand theoretical claims

Earth Transformed by Frankopan is a nice recent addition to the genre of big history. I found it incredibly well sourced, and devoid of grand theoretical claims. It also doesn't suffer of Western centrism, the author goes to great lengths to show global developments and how big environmental changes impacted different regions and cultures in different ways. Just facts and very balanced analysis, and it is a huge book. It has 200 pages just of notes, that you download separately because the tome was already nearly 1000 pages long.