Showing titles in Civilization

Ancient Egypt wasn't all pyramids, sphinxes and gold sarcophagi. For your average Egyptian, life was tough, and work was hard, conducted under the burning gaze of the sun god Ra. During the course of a day in the ancient city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor), Egypt's religious capital, we meet 24 Egyptians from all strata of society - from the king to the bread-maker, the priestess to the fisherman, the soldier to the midwife - and get to know what the real Egypt was like by spending an hour in their company.

Focusing on key characters from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries, including Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Newton, Descartes, Spinoza, Louis XIV and Charles I, Dark Brilliance is a fascinating and wide-ranging history that explores the human costs of imposing progress and modernity.

Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds is the most up-to-date and comprehensive investigation of history's infamous sunken city. Nowhere else will you find a more dramatic and convincing presentation of the evidence for its archaeological reality.

From the Birthplace of the Gods in New Zealand, to the Andean home of the Shining People, and the Yucatec temple cities of the People of The Serpent, best-selling author Freddy Silva re-examines the world’s flood traditions and discovers an interconnected web of master seafarers, astronomers and magicians, their monuments and traditions, and a previously unknown island nation where the antediluvian gods lived before it sank.

A DITADURA DE 1964 ACABOU? O QUE NOS FICOU DAQUELES ANOS NEGROS? Este livro empolgante, que se lê de um fôlego, nos revela que a ditadura de 1964 estende seus tentáculos aos dias de hoje, quando parte da população, insuflada pela mídia, bate panelas e desfila nas ruas com palavras de ordem...

'At last, a history of the Roman state as it has always been crying out to be told, and never has been!' RODERICK BEATON The greatest empire in Western history - told as never been told before. Rome is often remembered for its spectacular collapse. But for over two thousand years - through civil...

Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.

When a travel writer is stuck on home soil in the middle of a pandemic he meets Kris Rodgers, one of Britain's eminent metal detectorists. Dipping a toe in the hobby, Nigel quickly finds himself swept up in the world beneath the surface. Above the ground are a cast of fascinating and passionate...

Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story Fewer ideas have been more toxic or harmful than the idea of the biological reality of race, and with it the idea that humans of different races...

In Up the Youth Club, Emma Warren maps the shifting story of youth clubs in the UK and Northern Ireland, from factory workers in Victorian Boys' and Girls' clubs to renegade self-emancipatory spaces in the 1970s and the music-generating youth clubs of more recent decades. With a mixed lineage in church evangelism, the patronage of the upper classes, grassroots' DIY, and erratic state funding, the youth club has had a huge, yet almost invisible, effect on music, sport, culture and society.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Do tough times create tougher people? Can humanity handle the power of its weapons without destroying itself? Will human technology ever peak or regress? And why, since the dawn of time, has it always seemed as though death and destruction are waiting just around...

In How the Medici Shaped the Renaissance, you’ll study the remarkable trajectory of the Medici from the late 14th century to 1737, when the Medici dynasty ended. Across that span of time, you’ll witness the birth of the Italian Renaissance, and the rise of the Medici as an economic powerhouse under founder Giovanni de’ Medici. You’ll learn how the Medici came to dominate Florence and how they played diverse roles in politics, religion, and culture.

Through the story of his own family's history as slave and plantation owners, Alex Renton looks at how we owe it to the present to understand the legacy of the past. When slavery was abolished across most of the British Empire in 1833, it was not the newly liberated who received compensation, but the tens of thousands of enslavers who were paid millions of pounds in government money. The ancestors of some of those slave owners are among the wealthiest and most powerful people in Britain today.

A TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR ‘A diligent historian and a superb writer’ THE TIMES A gripping new history of the making of England as a nation. In December 1642, during the Civil War, Parliamentarian troops stormed Winchester Cathedral and smashed ten beautifully decorated wooden chests...

Two-time Pulitzer Prize - winning historian Barbara Tuchman explores the complex relationship of Britain to Palestine that led to the founding of the modern Jewish state - and to many of the problems that plague the Middle East today.

'A vivid, visceral and crucial read for our times' BETTANY HUGHES 'Wonderful and insightful' ADRIAN GOLDSWORTHY The collapse of law and order in the last years of the Roman Republic told through the rise and fall of its most famous lawyer, Cicero. In its final decades, the Roman Republic was...

From the author of ‘Wartime’ and ‘The Thirties’comes an outstanding history of the most prolonged and devastating attack ever endured by Britain's civilian population – the Blitz. September 1940 marked the beginning of Nazi Germany's sustained attack on civilian Britain. Lasting eight...

Humanly Possible is a wide-ranging, personal, thought-provoking and entertaining journey through the battle of ideas over some 700 years of history—mostly, but not exclusively, in Europe. Through a mixture of biography and philosophy, Bakewell seeks to understand what humanism is, why it has continued to flourish despite opposition from fanatics, mystics, tyrants and cultural pessimists of all kinds, and exactly why we should value and defend it in the 21st century.

In this extraordinary book, an award-winning author tells the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age “Terrific… Tamim Ansary explores the underappreciated ways that empires, nations, and smaller sets of people have responded to their surroundings...

While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place. Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically grounded explanation for our love of alcohol.

Except most of the ideas that form Western Civilisation are just that—ideas. Taking cues from Greek philosophy and honed in the Enlightenment, certain notions about humanity and human society grew into the tenets we live by, and we haven't questioned them a great deal since. But isn't it time we asked who really benefits from the values at the core of our society? How much truth lies in a science that conjured up 'race'? Who do laws and nations really protect? Why does it feel like time is money? What even is 'art'?

The author of The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self Our disconnection from one another and the natural world has mislaid the foundations of...

Brought to you by Penguin. From breakups that ended empires to naps that sank ships, 10 Mistakes That Changed History reveals how overlooked historical errors are responsible for some of the most era-defining events of the past. Featuring many of the most recognisable characters and episodes in...

Britain's landscape is scarred with haunting and romantic remains; these shadowlands that were once filled with life are now just spectral echoes. Peering through the cracks of history, we find Dunwich, a medieval city plunged off a Suffolk cliff by sea storms; the lost city of Trellech unearthed by moles in the Welsh Marches; and the ghostly reservoir that is Capel Celyn, one of the few remaining solely Welsh-speaking villages, drowned by Liverpool City Council.

Bloomsbury presents The Musical Human by Michael Spitzer, read by Daniel Levitin. A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 'Full of delightful nuggets' Guardian online 'Entertaining, informative and philosphical ... An essential read' All About History 'Extraordinary range ... All the world and more is here'...

Master historian Barbara W. Tuchman looks at history in a unique way and draws lessons from what she sees. This accessible introduction to the subject of history offers striking insights into America's past and present, trenchant observations on the international scene, and thoughtful pieces on the historian's role. Here is a splendid body of work, the story of a lifetime spent "practicing history".

Tom Standage's fleet-footed and surprising global histories have delighted fans and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Now, he returns with a provocative account of an overlooked form of technology - personal transportation - and explores how it has shaped societies and cultures over millennia. Beginning around 3,500 BCE with the wheel - a device that didn't catch on until a couple thousand years after its invention - Standage zips through the eras of horsepower, trains, and bicycles, revealing how each successive mode of transit embedded itself in the world we live in.

Esta es la historia del encuentro entre dos mundos: Oriente y Occidente conectados por una red de caminos conocida como la Ruta de la Seda, por la que circularon la ambición, las riquezas, el poder y, sobre todo, el conocimiento. Todo comenzó con un puñado de objetos. Valiosas posesiones que pasaban de mano en mano y recorrían miles de kilómetros a través de océanos, desiertos y montañas. Su inmenso valor no dependía solo de su belleza o de la pericia necesaria para elaborarlas; aquellas mercancías exóticas poseían la capacidad de hacer soñar a los que las contemplaban con tierras...

Wales might seem like a quiet corner of the globe, but its history is anything but silent…. From Celtic warriors to Roman conquerors, this book takes you on a journey exploring a captivating nation forged through centuries of battles and achievements.

It can come in waves - like tidal waves. It changes societies. It disrupts life. It ends lives. As far back as 3000 B.C.E. (the Bronze Age), plagues have stricken mankind. COVID-19 is just the latest example, but history shows that life continues. It shows that knowledge and social cooperation can save lives. Viruses are neither alive nor dead and are the closest thing we have to zombies. Their only known function is to replicate themselves, which can have devastating consequences on their hosts.

Combining rigorous research with myth and folklore, Alexandria is an authoritative history of a city that has shaped our modern world. Soon after being founded by Alexander the Great, Alexandria became the crucible of cultural exchange between East and West for millennia and the undisputed global capital of knowledge. It was at the forefront of human progress, but it also witnessed brutal natural disasters, plagues, crusades and violence.