What are some grandiose history books...

What are some grandiose history books? Books that span hundreds of years and concern cultures and civilizations rather than individuals?
Bonus points for beautiful prose.

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Bridge on the Drina is a really good read on the smattering of cultures that live in the Balkans around one particular bridge over the course of a few centuries. It is in no way "grandiose" though, thank god

Gibbon obviously. Livy and Herodotus as well

This.
and Spengler.

Isn't Gibbon outdated though? Aren't there any more recent good books about the decline of the Roman Empire?

(((“Gibbon is outdated”)))

Tacitus, Polybius, Plutarch, Sallust, the Greeks and Romans in other words.
Next, Fustel de Coulanges' Ancient City.

James Michener in his The Source which is about a city in Israel with different characters who are all of the same family throughout 10,000 years of history.

If you don't want ANY characters at all the Outline of History by H.G. Wells is a classic.

He is, but these days nobody would write a book like that spanning multiple centuries. Modern historians focus on a smaller period, and also they don't have his awesome prose. HODAFOTRE could be complete balls from start to finish but it would still be one of the greatest English books

>Books that span hundreds of years and concern cultures and civilizations rather than individuals
Fernand Braudel’s Annales school does just that.
Also Hobsbawm

>Fustel de Coulanges
absolutely based

The Divine Comedy captures the times zeitgeist perfectly.

any history books that do not fall for the "scientific reductionism" meme?

He's only outdated in the sense that there are much more detailed technical works about parts of Roman history nowadays, but he's still very good for getting the grand scale of things (excepting the Byzantines; Gibbon pretty much single-handedly delayed the field of Byzantine scholarship by over a century because of how badly he rubbished it).

These. I would also suggest playing Dwarf Fortress

>Dwarf Fortress
what's that ?

A game where you start with some dwarves and work to build an underground empire. A lot of stuff can go wrong

what does it have to do with grandiose history ?

Don't know, I'm notAnd I haven't ever played it

>A lot of stuff can go wrong
Like killing your social life

The game Minecraft ripped off

it procedurally generates a grandiouse history of a world many times over
it also creates a history and background for every citizen and artifact in the world
all this stuff is different with each playthrough

Carlyle's French Revolution
Michelet's French Revolution
Burckhardt's civilization of the renaissance in Italy(though it is a beast of a different kind, not an epic history but a cultural history, Burckhardt was a keen reader of Schopenhauer)

19th century Romantic history is comfy af. If you are interested try reading hayden b white's metahistory. History is poetical- based on methaphor, synecdoche, analogy- metaphysical and political. Then youll understand what Walter Benjamin was on about.

Glubb's Fate of Empires
Toynbee