There isn't really one work or bit of media that is going to catch you up on 'general history'. You might as well start reading a lot of Wikipedia articles or something, seeing as a lot of pop history coverage is, quite frankly, bad. If you need a book, you could try A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bryson, who at least hangs a lot of detail (albeit too much irrelevant minutiae of persons) on his prose, but if you want quality historical knowledge you are going to have to pick a particular part of history and then look for good books covering it.