Showing titles in Civilization

'Neima’s book, impeccably researched and beautifully written, will be an inspiration for anyone looking to an alternative future today.' - Stella Tillyard, author of Aristocrats and The Great Level 'Deeply interesting and a pleasure to read, The Utopians illuminates the history of “social...

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE * A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 100 BOOK OF THE CENTURY * A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * A TIME ALL-TIME 100 NONFICTION BOOK Updated with FOUR NEW MAJOR CHAPTERS illuminating the new developments in cancer detection, prevention, treatment, and...

Using our past as a basis for a new understanding of our future, Hanno Sauer traces humanity's fundamental moral transformations from our earliest ancestors through to the present day, when it seems we have never disagreed more over what it means to be good. Our current political disagreements may feel like the end of the world, but where will the evolution of morality take us next?

Travel across thousands of years and countless cultures with this lively, informative, and entertaining exploration of ancient civilizations. Covering the period from 3500 BC to 1500 AD, this audiobook blends history, storytelling, and humour into a single guide that’s as enjoyable as it is enlightening. Whether you’re a lifelong history fan or simply curious about how ancient civilizations shaped the world, you’ll find plenty to learn, laugh at, and share.

The day after Jesus' death, whatever small mark he made on the world seemed destined to disappear. Instead, his impact on human history has been unparalleled, leading believers and nonbelievers alike to ask, Who Is This Man? In Who Is This Man, bestselling author John Ortberg explores the...

Modernity developed only in the West - in Europe and North America. Nowhere else did science and democracy arise; nowhere else was slavery outlawed. Only Westerners invented chimneys, musical scores, telescopes, eyeglasses, pianos, electric lights, aspirin, and soap. The question is, why? Unfortunately, that question has become so politically incorrect that most scholars avoid it. But acclaimed author Rodney Stark provides the answers in this sweeping new look at Western civilization.

It's easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk of extinction. In What Is Ancient History?, Walter Scheidel presents a compelling case for a new kind of ancient history—a global history that captures antiquity's pivotal role as a decisive phase in human development, one that provided the shared foundation of our world and continues to shape our lives today.

Resistance to malaria. Blue eyes. Lactose tolerance. What do all of these traits have in common? Every one of them has emerged in the last 10,000 years.

‘Europe where the sun dares scarce appear For freezing meteors and congealed cold.’ Christopher Marlowe In this innovative and compelling work of environmental history, Philipp Blom chronicles the great climate crisis of the 1600s, a crisis that would transform the entire social and...

In this groundbreaking investigation, archaeologist R Jay Driskill combines decades of fieldwork with cutting-edge research to reveal the true story behind one of history's most dramatic collapses. Drawing on newly discovered evidence from Egypt to Greece, from Cyprus to Syria, Raiders of the Bronze Age Collapse transforms our understanding of this pivotal moment when the ancient world burned.

How four tools enabled humanity to control its destiny What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Listeners of Sapiens will say a cognitive revolution - a dramatic evolutionary change that altered our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones - caused a cultural explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time.

In this comprehensive work, David Eltis offers a two-thousand-year perspective on the trafficking of people, and boldly intervenes in the expansive discussions about slavery in the last half-century. Using new and underexplored data made available by slavevoyages.org, Eltis offers compelling explanations of why the slave trades began and why they ended, and in the process debunks long-held assumptions, including how bilateral rather than triangular voyages were the norm, and how the Portuguese rather than the British were the leading slave traders.

No animal is so entangled in human history as the horse. The thread starts in prehistory, with a slight, shy animal, hunted for food. Domesticating the horse allowed early humans to settle the vast Eurasian steppe; later, their horses enabled new forms of warfare, encouraged long-distance trade routes, and ended up acquiring deep cultural and religious significance.

The perfect St. Patrick's Day gift, and a book in the best tradition of popular history -- the untold story of Ireland's role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe. Every year millions of Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but they may not be aware of how great...

A celebration of the brave, drunken pioneers who built our civilization one seemingly bad decision at a time, A Brief History of Vice explores a side of the past that mainstream history books prefer to hide. History has never been more fun—or more intoxicating. Guns, germs, and steel might...

In southern Iraq, a crushing silence hangs over the dunes. For nearly 5,000 years, the sands of the Iraqi desert have held the remains of the oldest known civilization: the Sumerians. When American archaeologists discovered a collection of cuneiform tablets in Iraq in the late 19th century, they were confronted with a language and a people who were at the time only scarcely known to even the most knowledgeable scholars of ancient Mesopotamia.

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...

Storytelling, a tradition that built human civilization, may soon destroy it Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to...

Growth has been both an unspoken and an explicit aim of our individual and collective striving. It governs the lives of microorganisms and galaxies; it shapes the capabilities of our extraordinarily large brains and the fortunes of our economies. Growth is manifested in annual increments of continental crust, a rising gross domestic product, a child's growth chart, the spread of cancerous cells. In this magisterial book, Vaclav Smil offers systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations.

Unsolved Medical Mysteries: Explaining the Unexplainable is your chance to explore the strangest and most confounding cases in medical history. In 12 gripping lectures, acclaimed author, historian, and medical humanities expert Dr. Brandy Schillace guides you on a fascinating journey into the unknown, from historical enigmas to modern medical conundrums. With her unique blend of storytelling and scientific insight, Dr. Schillace digs into a range of medical mysteries