I love the Durants' series. It is certainly outdated now in many ways, but there is a lot of value in that kind of huge overview of history. If you want to get the backbone of a large span of time it's great, and still my go to when there's a time period that I want to start learning about. Of course, it has a lot of weaknesses, not least of which is that it's very weak on Asian history in general, but for the west it's still very readable and worth your time.