Paul, thanks for the provocative piece, though the state of the art is certain much further along that your piece intimates. For the general reader, I would suggest reading MIT professor Cesar Hidalgo's recent book Why Information Grows (MIT Press, 2015) for some general structure and philosophy.

One of the best definitions and frameworks I've seen thus far has to be that of Christoph Adami. To start, and depending on your level of sophistication, take a look at his recent arXiv paper (Information-theoretic considerations concerning the origin of life - http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.0590 ) and then take a crack at this popular press article about it in Medium https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/information-theory-and-the-origin-of-life-4cf6b93d156c). If it's something that blows your skirt up, then you can certainly begin to delve more deeply into some of his journal articles over the past decade or so.

For further references, I maintain a nice list of resources at Information Theory and Biology Resources [http://boffosocko.com/itbio/], as well as a "journal club" of sorts at Mendeley: ITBio: Information Theory, Microbiology, Evolution, and Complexity [https://www.mendeley.com/groups/2545131/itbio-information-theory-microbiology-evolution-and-complexity/].

For those who like to watch video material, I'll refer them to some videos from the NIMBioS Workshop on Information and Entropy in Biological Systems [http://boffosocko.com/2015/05/20/videos-from-nimbios-workshop-on-information-and-entropy-in-biological-systems/] organized by physicist John Carlos Baez. The Banff International Research Station also hosted a relatively recent week long workshop on Biological and Bio-Inspired Information Theory [http://www.birs.ca/events/2014/5-day-workshops/14w5170] which covered some interesting related ground with videos of many of the talks there as well.

I'm presuming they won't let him bring the book home? I'll bet that if you can wait a few weeks into the school year you'll find a handful of used copies begin to hit the market, but I HIGHLY doubt that the 6th edition is substantively different from the 4th or 5th edition which you can probably get for pennies on the dollar. (Outside of David Christian's Big History concept (https://school.bighistoryproject.com/bhplive), educational approach and new material hasn't drastically changed world history textbooks in decades.) If you read through the linked article above, there are a few more ideas you might use to cut the price a bit.

For an AP class, you may be better off buying some supplementary popular non-fiction books (eg. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World; Cleopatra: A Life; Guns, Germs & Steel; The Landmark Thucydides, anything written by Simon Winchester) which are likely to be more interesting, entertaining, and informative than the "assigned" textbook. They'll help reinforce not only material, but reading skills, and critical thinking. You could also check to see if international editions exist yet and buy one of those at a steep discount (see the link in the article).

Digging around in free online MOOC's can also reveal some excellent non-textbooks and references (like Jeremy Edelman's History of the World Since 1300 https://www.coursera.org/course/wh1300). Try edX, Coursera, MITOCW, and the like for more possibilities.

You can also find some additional ideas via: http://boffosocko.com/.../30/on-choosing-your-own-textbooks/

I recall a few other resources in the same category as this. Here are a few links for meta-coverage on them, which may provide more beneficial than spending hours trying to delve into how to use them:
VidBolt: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/annotate-video-on-the-fly-a-review-of-vidbolt/56787
Socialbook: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/using-video-annotation-tools-to-teach-film-analysis/57171

Other tools of interest, which you'll see notes on in the comments to the two above articles:
VideoAnt: http://ant.umn.edu
ULBPodcast: https://github.com/ulbpodcast and http://ezcast.ulb.ac.be (open source code available)
Genius.com: http://boffosocko.com/2014/04/08/rap-genius/ Particularly take a look at http://lit.genius.com/ which is a great tool for classrooms to do small scale shared annotations and close reading with the benefit of full texts (in particular, try looking up the various creation stories, eg: Gilgamesh [http://genius.com/Epic-of-gilgamesh-tablet-1-the-coming-of-enkidu-annotated; Letters of Paul [http://genius.com/Laura-nasrallah-the-pauline-epistles-contents-annotated], which was part of HarvardX religious studies course and is an excellent example of using the platform for education]). There's also http://genius.com/history-genius.

#BigHistory

There are some much better apps out there for speed reading… Here’s an article with a few ideas: Speed Reading on the Web and Mobile [http://boffosocko.com/2014/06/10/speed-reading-on-web-and-mobile/]

I agree Layla, but we can kick it up a million notches from even here. I highly recommend reading Samantha Power's "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide". But because it's so viscerally depressing, I highly recommend reading it in VERY small doses over a period of time. Some of our difficulty is in answering the questions, "What can I do?" and "How can I help?" Just take it a step at a time... Everyone should keep in mind that we've got some big elections coming up and candidates should be pressed to commit to concrete action while in office. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465061516/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0465061516&linkCode=as2&tag=jhucivility-20&linkId=OQUAIK7KROVD5OFY

@charlestonchoo Not the time zone I expected! Happy reading and good night.

I've seen that same article floating around for the past several weeks (in some part because I had the originating professor in college). The trouble with the experiment as it relates to early human societies is that most of them were kinship based, and for basic functionality, they all were forced to intercommunicate and typically put family first in a sense. In this exercise, there is no communication, nor any real speakable "community"- everyone is truly out for themselves.

I've recently been reading Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011) [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00457X7VI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00457X7VI&linkCode=as2&tag=bighistory-20&linkId=6J5DI7DWGOZGDWFN] and in it he provides some references to various cultures which to a great extent refutes the broader general existence for the tragedy of the commons. Naturally it does exist in some cultures, but only those with some specific forms of values, beliefs, and property ownership rules. In particular, since many early human political structures are kinship based, their societies simply didn't face such tragedies. It primarily seems to be a more modern problem, based on western rules of ownership.

In short, the interesting exercise here to me seems to be what constructs in society lead to creating the tragedy of the commons and which don't? Figuring this problem out will help to maintain stability in our current culture for generations to come.

I'd mentioned his books previously as very Big History focused here: https://www.yammer.com/bhpteachercommunity/#/Threads/show?threadId=549613213

@cesifoti Thanks for the link! I presumed that you may have a simpler list that your editor had you flesh out further to better fit the form of a popular press text rather than the sparser forms usually found in academia. I've read a good number of the references I've run across so far, but was more curious to get a snapshot of the overlap and gaps in our respective reading lists. Fortunately Goodreads.com actually has a tool for creating such a Venn diagram.

Most of my "holes" thus far are on the economics side, which I anticipated.