I know this is an extremely broad question, but I wanted to gain a more general understanding of world history and I was hoping to compile a booklist of the best general knowledge books from early history to current day.

For example, if I wanted a general knowledge of United States history, I could read "A People's History of the United States" which would give me a very good broad overview from independence to the modern era. Are there similarly good books from each era/society in human history?

I went through the Resources tab on the side and browsed some of the books, but it for many topics/eras there wasn't a whole lot of general knowledge books. I also wasn't sure whether this belonged in r/books or not, but I figured actual historians would know the best books in each category.