mithen, Steven. After the Ice. A Global Human History. 20,000–5,000 BC, by Phoenix (2004). ISBN: 978-0-7538-1392-8. An amazing and outstanding work on humankind's history throughout 15,000 years of its past history, a time of global warming that experienced many changes that shaped the world as we know it today. The book is presented as an imaginary journey through all these years, visiting different places all over the world, during which we learn how archaeology has evolved since its early days and how our vision of prehistory and early Neolithic has radically changed since then. The work is dense and it progresses chronologically, but the chapters are grouped into geographic sections (the Western Asia, Africa, Americas...), so we can choose to read the desired chapters only, or the whole book from beginning to end.
    The provided scientific and objective information is accompanied by recreations of the landscape, the weather changes or the human life and customs for every time and area, although some human scenes should be taken with caution since they're too speculative and clearly fictive. But that kind of speculation is welcome if the reader is intelligent enough as to separate the wheat from the chaff and use these fictional recreations to make the proper questions and take more advantage from the book than previously thought.