If you're interested in a book, or e-book, check out Will Durant and the story of civilization series. It's highly accessible and despite a few issues, is still useful today. He takes a broad view of what is important and spends more time on art, ideas, and processes than battles and assassinations. The writing style is superb and uses a judicious mix of details and broad strokes (he even uses a different font size for sections that are highly specialized like currency and price overviews so it's easy to skip the uninteresting), and to this day the books give me plenty of avenues for exploration.