True World History?

I am always a fan of world history, or the so-called big history,
meaning that I don't care about the details so much as to how tall Napolean was,
or what the date was and of what year did certain wars start and end.
Rather, the focus is on the consequences of a few events that were bound to happen,
and that proved to have long-lasting effects,
that could forever change the outlook of the landscape.

History for me before reading a few years back the following 3 books
1. A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia
2. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
3. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
were limited to China and Europe + a few voyages made by the early colonizers.

I used to have more interests in the past and the ancient world than the present,
but then, something has changed,
and I am suddenly quite ambitious that
I think I'll look more about the so-called new world,
and the forgotten countries in the old world.

Any education systems that disregard true interests are failures,
and I come to learn that, no matter what subject I study,
I am always paying attention to history.
All that indicate that history is my main thing..

And reading about history do calm me down.
Actually, the only question (almost) that I've always asked is,
how come the world becomes the state it is in,
and how does the present state compared with those in the older centuries.

I am after all, a believer in matter-of-factness.
Although literature does give one a playground to use the imagination to understand the existing problems,
it practically offers no real solutions except that by writing about these stuff,
the authors themselves get some consolations.

So, that's why, I believe I am switching back to some books that are slightly more academic,
or at least wouldn't spend all my time pointlessly in the great number of world classics I've compiled,
however enjoyable they really are.
BUT literature is what I believe, the eye-openers that everyone had better tried to read here and there.
The public reading the correct "books" could possibly make this world less hostile and less monotonic, so to speak..