Walter Libby’s An Introduction to the History of Science tells the science story for the general reader — Egypt and Babylonia, the Greeks, the Arabs, the scientific revolution and the laboratory age — organised not as a parade of dates but around vivid turning points and the practical needs that drove discovery.
It is a friendly first map of a vast territory, drawn when the history of science was itself becoming a discipline. Download the free EPUB and get the whole arc in one sitting.