World Civilizations

A world reborn in magic and a clan of witches caught in the storm. Millennia have passed since humankind ruled the world through technology. The seas have become impassable, energy sources long depleted, and civilization has collapsed into scattered barbarism. Yet from the ashes, something ancient has begun to stir: magic. Rare individuals, gifted with this new power, are trained by their sisters to become witches. Kasia, a witch and trader, has managed to guide the enigmatic Guild Poe to the island of Gothland, evading the ever-watchful eyes of Baron Dietrich. But within the sisterhood, ...

For thousands of years, the notion of dragons has struck fear in the hearts of men and women all over the world. The ancient Egyptians believed there was a dragon of darkness that attacked the sun god each day, and in Norway people thought that a dragon gnawed at the roots of the tree that sustained all life on Earth. Around the globe, dragons have been depicted as everything from massive, winged, fire-breathing creatures to beasts sporting a camel’s head, deer’s horns, rabbit’s eyes, and eagle’s claws! Dragons might hoard treasure in caves, or they might be responsible for floods and the death of livestock.

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.

The Sumerians settled in the area known as Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, around 5,000 years ago. They produced many fundamental changes to the way in which human societies developed - these were the first city-builders, the first people to use wheeled vehicles, the first methodical astronomers, and the first people to develop a sophisticated written language. The Sumerians also produced art, music, and literature as well as created some of the first professional soldiers the world had ever seen.

In the early 17th century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a novel. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from studying too many novels of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That story, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history.

Church History, Volume Two chronicles the events, the triumphs, and the struggles of the Christian movement from the years leading up to the Reformation through the next five centuries to the present-day.

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.

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.

From the best-selling author of The Templars, Dan Jones' epic new history tells nothing less than the story of how the world we know today came to be built. Across 16 chapters, blending Dan Jones' trademark gripping narrative style with authoritative analysis, Powers and Thrones shows how, at each stage in this story, successive Western powers thrived by attracting - or stealing - the most valuable resources, ideas and people from the rest of the world.

A few years ago, Mark Adams made a strange discovery: Everything we know about the lost city of Atlantis comes from the work of one man, the Greek philosopher Plato. Then he made a second, stranger discovery: Amateur explorers are still actively searching for this sunken city all around the world, based entirely on the clues Plato left behind.

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. The embrace of Christianity and Islam, even today, is not necessarily to the exclusion of ancestral spirits, nor the essentials of witchcraft and sorcery. The precarious security of albino people in east and central Africa, whose body parts are sought after in traditional “medicine,” is testimony to the fact that these superstitions are alive and well.

The Pleistocene spans a period from around 2.5 million years ago (mya) to just over 12,000 years ago, and it was an epoch of enormous change on Earth, mainly characterized by climate changes involving fluctuations between periods of extreme heat and long periods of glaciation. This period is commonly known as the Ice Age, despite the fact there were actually a number of separate periods of cold. The Pleistocene Era: The History of the Ice Age and the Dawn of Modern Humans looks at the development of the era, what life on Earth was like, and the origins of archaic humans.

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.

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.

The history and evolution of land ownership is a fascinating chronicle in the history of civilization, offering unexpected insights about how various forms of democracy and capitalism developed, as well as a revealing analysis of a future where the Earth must sustain nine billion lives. Seen through the eyes of remarkable individuals - Chinese emperors; German peasants; the 17th century English surveyor William Petty, who first saw the connection between private property and free-market capitalism.

The Minoans were an ancient civilization that built their settlements on islands in the Aegean Sea. They lived almost 5,000 years ago and left behind traces of their lives, but not enough for people to create a complete picture. Ever since the early 20th century, the Minoans have been a subject of interest, thanks to the discoveries and excavations by Sir Arthur Evans, a British archaeologist who found the first Minoan ruins and named them after the mythological King Minos and his Minotaur.

One of the most significant works on our evolutionary ancestry since Richard Leakey's Origins, The First Signs is the first-ever exploration of the geometric images that accompany most cave art around the world—the first indications of symbolic meaning, intelligence, and language.

The Fate of Empires analyzes many of the commonly held traits of the world’s historic empires and demonstrates how the presence or absence of these can determine the outcome of these societies. The author isolates two main forces operating in advanced civilizations: the urge to reproduce as well as competition among members of society.

Machu Picchu is one of South America's best tourist spots, and the ruins have even been voted one of the Seven New Wonders of the World. But even though Machu Picchu is now the best known of all Incan ruins, its function in Incan civilization is still not clear. Some have speculated that it was an outpost or a frontier citadel, while others believe it to be a sanctuary or a work center for women. Still others suggest that it was a ceremonial center or perhaps even the last refuge of the Incas after the Spanish conquest.

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....