A few weeks ago I stumbled upon on Google Books part of When Histories Collide by the late Irish farmer turned economist Raymond Crotty. This book, unfinished up on the author's death in 1994, presents a cattle-centered history of the world, with an emphasis on the deep roots of individualistic capitalism in Western Europe. It's of particular interest because it marks an early milestone in including divergent recent evolution in history —Crotty focuses closely upon the vast consequences of the emergence of a mutation for lactose tolerance, allowing adults to drink milk in some parts of the world. At GNXP, Razib has summarized the book—it doesn't quite live up to its ambitions, but it deserves to be much better known in the U.S. than it is.