World Civilizations

The Spark of Genius: 20 Inventions That Changed the World 💡 Explore the fascinating stories behind 20 world-changing inventions, from the wheel to artificial intelligence. 📜 Uncover the human struggles, breakthroughs, and bold ideas that fueled history’s greatest innovations. 🧠 Meet the brilliant minds and unsung heroes who shaped our world through creativity and determination. 🛠️ From the printing press to the internet, learn how each invention redefined what was possible. 🚀 See how innovation drives progress, transforming societies, economies, and daily life. 🔍 ...

For the first time, religious self-identification is on the decline in American. Some analysts have cited as cause a post-9/11 perception: that faith in general is a source of aggression, intolerance, and divisiveness - something bad for society. But how accurate is that view? With deep learning and sympathetic understanding, Karen Armstrong sets out to discover the truth about religion and violence in each of the world’s great traditions, taking us on an astonishing journey from prehistoric times to the present.

Millennium is a stunning panoramic account of the two centuries on either side of the apocalyptic year 1000. This was the age of Canute, William the Conqueror and Pope Gregory VII, of Vikings, monks and serfs, of the earliest castles and the invention of knighthood, and of the primal conflict between church and state. The story of how the distinctive culture of Europe - restless, creative and dynamic - was forged from out of the convulsions of these extraordinary times is as fascinating and as momentous as any in history.

Inside you will find some of the most famous highlights from history along with the greatest stories ever written. Children will learn about the past and our ancestors in new and exciting ways.

In The Power of Strangers, Joe Keohane sets out on a journey to discover what happens when we bridge the distance between us and people we don’t know. He learns that while we’re wired to sometimes fear, distrust, and even hate strangers, people and societies that have learned to connect with strangers benefit immensely.

Ranofer struggles to thwart the plottings of his evil brother, Gebu, so he can become master goldsmith like their father. Young listeners will love this exciting tale of ancient Egyptian mystery and intrigue.

Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the powerful role stories and literature have played in creating the world we have today. Puchner introduces us to numerous visionaries as he explores 16 foundational texts selected from more than 4,000 years of world literature and reveals how writing has inspired the rise and fall of empires and nations, the spark of philosophical and political ideas, and the birth of religious beliefs. Indeed, literature has touched generations and changed the course of history.

In 1922, Howard Carter peered into Tutankhamun's tomb for the first time, the only light coming from the candle in his outstretched hand. Urged to tell what he was seeing through the small opening he had cut in the door to the tomb, the Egyptologist famously replied, "I see wonderful things". Carter's fabulous discovery is just one of the many spellbinding stories told in Three Stones Make a Wall.

Centered in the Dordogne region of Southwestern France, one of Europe's most concentrated regions for Neandertal and early modern human occupations, writer Beebe Bahrami follows and participates in the work of archaeologists who are doing some of the most comprehensive and global work to date on the research, exploration, and recovery of our ancient ancestors. From this prehistoric perch, Bahrami gets to know firsthand the Neandertals and the people who love them.

For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could only be achieved by sacrificing those original freedoms, or alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. Graeber and Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today.

According to legend, the Roman emperor Nero set fire to his majestic imperial capital on the night of July 19, 64 AD and fiddled while the city burned. It’s a story that has been told for more than two millennia - and it’s likely that almost none of it is true. In Rome Is Burning, distinguished Roman historian Anthony Barrett sets the record straight, providing a comprehensive and authoritative account of the Great Fire of Rome, its immediate aftermath, and its damaging long term consequences for the Roman world.

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 storytelling we can no longer ignore. Storytelling, the very tradition that built human civilization, may be the thing that destroys it.

The Unnatural World chronicles a disparate band of unlikely heroes: an effervescent mad scientist who would fertilize the seas, a pigeon obsessive bent on bringing back the extinct, a low-level government functionary in China doing his best to clean up his city, and more. These scientists, billionaires, and ordinary people are all working toward saving the best home humanity is ever likely to have.

You’ll be amazed to discover the incredible leaps humanity made and how each ancient civilization flourished. Learn more about the culture, achievements, and religions of some of the world’s most famous civilizations. You will be surprised to learn just how much the six ancient civilizations in this audiobook had in common, despite being thousands of miles apart or even thousands of years apart! And you’ll be amazed when you hear how much their cultures have shaped our own societies today.

The Zapotecs formed one of the most important of the pre-Columbian civilizations. For 1,000 years, their main city of Monte Albán was one of the largest and most sophisticated in Mesoamerica. Building this city was an astonishing engineering feat - it involved flattening a hill in the center of the Oaxaca Valley to create an artificial plateau and then constructing a series of large, ornate buildings on this inaccessible site. Maintaining this large city on a site with no natural source of water must have required an enormous and willing workforce.

Graham Hancock's multi-million best seller Fingerprints of the Gods remains an astonishing, deeply controversial, wide-ranging investigation of the mysteries of our past and the evidence for Earth's lost civilisation. Twenty years on, Hancock returns with a book filled with completely new, scientific and archaeological evidence, which has only recently come to light....

In A Human History of Emotion, Richard Firth-Godbehere takes listeners on a fascinating and wide ranging tour of the central and often under-appreciated role emotions have played in human societies around the world and throughout history — from Ancient Greece to Gambia, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, the United States, and beyond.

לפני מאה אלף שנים חיו בכדור הארץ לפחות שישה מינים שונים של אדם. לאף אחד מהם לא היתה חשיבות מיוחדת. תפקידם בטבע לא היה גדול מזה של גורילות, גחליליות או סוסוני ים. לפני כשבעים אלף שנה התחולל שינוי מסתורי כלשהו בתודעתו של אחד ממיני האדם הללו — הומו סאפיינס — ודחף אותו להשתלט על העולם כולו. ההיסטוריה של הומו סאפיינס מאז ועד היום היא לעתים מזעזעת, לעתים משעשעת ותמיד מרתקת. מה בדיוק קרה להומו סאפיינס לפני שבעים אלף שנה שדחף אותו להשתלט על העולם? איך ולמה נעלמו כל יתר מיני האדם?

For at least 20,000 years, we have led not just an earthly existence, but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are - our art, religious beliefs, social status, scientific advances, and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. It's a disconnect with a dire cost.

Takuto and his empire confront their first true rival in the armies of the Demon Lord, which Takuto recognizes from the RPG Brave Questers. What new strategies will Mynoghra be forced to undertake to overcome the Demon Lord’s army that operates under entirely different game mechanics?