World Civilizations

William Scott-Elliot (1849-1919) was a theosophist and follower of Helena Blavatsky. In The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria - first published in 1896 - the author explores the histories of the two legendary lost continents in light of Blavatsky's theories about ancient history and lost races. There are similarities with some of Edgar Cayce’s claims, and it is said that H P Lovecraft was inspired by Scot-Elliot’s writing in constructing the "Cthulhu Mythos".

This time Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook bring you an alphabetical miscellany, taking on some of history’s best and most bizarre moments. Charge forth against the traitors of the American Revolution, journey through Baghdad to discover the origins of the Arabian Nights and head to Sicily to witness the first face-off between Carthage and Rome.

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.

Na nova edição do livro que conquistou milhões de leitores ao redor do mundo, Yuval Noah Harari questiona tudo o que sabemos sobre a trajetória humana no planeta ao explorar quem somos, como chegamos até aqui e por quais caminhos ainda poderemos seguir. Com narração de Antonio Fagundes.

Entropy is the most destructive force in the universe. Entropy shakes the entire universe apart--all according to long understood principals of thermodynamics. People often wonder why things go wrrrong. Entropy, according to the laws of randomness, is the problem here, as well. Whenever we can make a single right action, randomness provides the opportunity for an infinite number of wrong actions. Thus, making things go wrong is easy. Right actions can be problematic. Entropy is a measurement of randomness, or chaos. Since everything in the universe is composed of random energy, entropy is ...

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.

Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to this music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we understand who we are. Yet music is an overlooked part of our origin story. The Musical Human takes us on an exhilarating journey across the ages - from Bach to BTS and back - to explore the vibrant relationship between music and the human species.

In 43 CE Roman conquest of Britannia seems all but certain - until a chance meeting between King Prasutagus of the Iceni and a runaway slave of royal decent from the Aedui tribe in Gaul changes the fate of the British islands forever. Rise up for liberty with the true story of Boudicca: Britain's Queen of the Iceni and discover one of the most inspiring stories in history!

Prize-winning historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney delivers a captivating exploration of how “Western Civilization”—the concept of a single cultural inheritance extending from ancient Greece to modern times—is a powerful figment of our collective imagination. An urgently needed emergent voice in big history, she offers a bold new account of Western history, real and imagined, through the lives of fourteen remarkable individuals.

¿Es aburrida la Historia? Eso depende de quién te la cuente. Con este audio libro te lo pasarás de lujo oyendo y adentrándote en la fascinante Antigüedad. Los hechos más importantes de este periodo reunidos en un único volumen lleno de curiosidades y anécdotas, y relatados en orden cronológico para que no te pierdas.

What good are the arts? Why should we care about the past? For millennia, humanity has sought to understand and transmit to future generations not just the "know-how" of life, but the "know-why"—the meaning and purpose of our existence, as expressed in art, architecture, religion, and philosophy. This crucial passing down of knowledge has required the radical integration of insights from the past and from other cultures. In Culture, acclaimed author, professor, and public intellectual Martin Puchner takes us on a breakneck tour through pivotal moments in world history.

Over vast expanses of time, fire and humanity have interacted to expand the domain of each, transforming the earth and what it means to be human. In this concise yet wide-ranging book, Stephen J. Pyne - named by Science magazine as "the world's leading authority on the history of fire" - explores the surprising dynamics of fire before humans, fire and human origins, aboriginal economies of hunting and foraging, agricultural and pastoral uses of fire, fire ceremonies, fire as an idea and a technology, and industrial fire.

Here is the remarkable story of how medieval Arab scholars made dazzling advances in science and philosophy, and of the itinerant Europeans who brought this knowledge back to the West. For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict. Meanwhile, Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to catch even a glimpse.

Did the ancient Greeks and Romans have conspiracy theories? Did they come close to an industrial revolution? Did they drink beer? In a series of fast-paced essays, Insane Emperors, Sunken Cities, and Earthquake Machines answers 40 questions that ancient historian Garrett Ryan has been asked in the classroom and through his popular YouTube channel ToldinStone. As in Dr. Ryan's previous book—Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants—the emphasis is on the fascinating details of daily life in the classical world.

Since the beginning of civilization, humans have built cities to wall nature out, then glorified it in beloved but quite artificial parks. In Urban Jungle Ben Wilson—the author of Metropolis, a seven-thousand-year history of cities that the Wall Street Journal called “a towering achievement”—looks to the fraught relationship between nature and the city for clues to how the planet can survive in an age of climate crisis.

Over the last three centuries, the West rose to dominate the planet. Then, suddenly, around the turn of the millennium, history reversed. Faced with economic stagnation and internal political division, the West has found itself in freefall. This is not the first time the global order has witnessed such a dramatic rise and fall. The Roman Empire followed a similar arc from dizzying power to disintegration - a fact that is more than a strange historical coincidence.

In this companion volume to The Discoverers, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel J. Boorstin brings to life more than three thousand years of human artistic achievement, examining painting, sculpture, architecture, theology, philosophy, history, poetry, drama, literature, dance, music, and film.

The Akkadian Empire was one of the first empires in human history and certainly the first to involve the central government of a large, multi-ethnic populace. It also introduced things like the very first postal system and facilitated advances in science, art, and medicine. The heart of the empire, the city of Akkad, became the most important trading center in the ancient world and one of the largest cities in the world. Then, in a relatively short time, the empire disintegrated, and the city itself was abandoned.

Best-selling author John Ortberg shares how Jesus' influence has swept over history and how his vision of life continues to impact humanity today. Jesus' impact on our world is highly unlikely, widely inescapable, largely unknown, and decidedly double-edged. It is unlikely in light of the severe limitations of his earthly life; it is inescapable because of the range of impact; it is unknown because history doesn't connect dots; and it is doubled-edged because his followers have wreaked so much havoc, often in his name.

This work is a collection of essays relating to social and economic, leadership, and ethics, ecological and religious issues that are facing the world today in order to understand the course of history that has led humanity to its present condition and then arrive at positive solutions that will lead to better outcomes for all humanity. It surveys the development and decline of major empires throughout history and focuses on the creation of American Empire along with the social, political and economic policies that led to the prominence of the United States of America as a Superpower ...