Showing titles in Civilization

Latitude is a gloriously exciting tale of adventure and scientific discovery that has never been told before. Nicholas Crane, the former president of the Royal Geographic Society, documents the remarkable expedition undertaken by a group of 12 European adventurer-scientists in the mid-18th century. The team spent years in South America, scaling volcanoes and traversing jungles, before they achieved their goal of establishing the exact shape of the Earth by measuring the length of one degree latitude at the equator.

Spectacular fossil finds make today's headlines; new technology unlocks secrets of skeletons unearthed 100 years ago. Still, evolution is often poorly represented by the media and misunderstood by the public. A potent antidote to pseudoscience, Written in Stone is an engrossing history of evolutionary discovery for anyone who has marveled at the variety and richness of life.

If you want to discover the captivating history of the barbarians, then keep listening....

A giant of archaeology, Colin Renfrew has immeasurably improved our understanding of human history. In this passionately argued work, he offers a concise summary of prehistory - human existence that predates the development of written records - while challenging the very definition of prehistory itself.

An accessible guide to the key milestones in Black history, culture, and society across the globe - from the ancient world to the present Discover the rich and complex history of the peoples of Africa, and the struggles and triumphs of Black cultures and communities around the world. With...

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.

SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER ‘The most important book of the year’ Daily Mail The brilliant and provocative new book from one of the world’s foremost political writers ‘The anti-Western revisionists have been out in force in recent years. It is high time that we revise them in...

Brought to you by Penguin. The audiobook edition of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari, read by Derek Perkins. **THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER** In twenty-one bite-sized lessons, Yuval Noah Harari explores what it means to be human in an age of bewilderment. How can we protect...

Take an astonishing, amusing, and charmingly unconventional tour through the curious everyday lives of humans past. No need to spend the day at an archaeological dig when you can simply make a cup of tea, clamber into your comfiest chair, and settle in with The Encyclopedia of the Weird and...

Respected scholar William Bennett reacquaints America with its heritage in the second volume of America: The Last Best Hope (Volume II). This engaging narrative slices through the cobwebs of time, memory, and prevailing cynicism to reinvigorate America with an informed patriotism. While national...

Many yoga practitioners explore the benefits of yoga through its poses, but did you know that the magic and mystery of yoga lie within the power of yogic mythology? Myths of the Asanas was the first book to collect and retell the ancient tales of yogic myth to a modern audience, and has since become a beloved resource for yoga practitioners and instructors the world over. This expanded edition contains nine unheard stories about some of the yoga world's most beloved poses.

For more than two millennia, Istanbul has stood at the crossroads of the world, perched at the very tip of Europe, gazing across the shores of Asia. The history of this city - known as Byzantium, then Constantinople, now Istanbul - is at once glorious, outsized, and astounding. Founded by the Greeks, its location blessed it as a center for trade but also made it a target of every empire in history, from Alexander the Great and his Macedonian Empire, to the Romans and later the Ottomans.

Alexander the Great and Cleopatra may be two of the most famous figures from the ancient world, but the Egyptian era bookended by their lives—the Ptolemaic period (305-30 BC)—is little known. In The Last Dynasty, Toby Wilkinson unravels the incredible story of this turbulent era.

From Graham Hancock, best-selling author of Fingerprints of the Gods, comes a mesmerizing book that takes us on a captivating underwater voyage to find the ruins of a lost civilization that's been hidden for thousands of years beneath the world's oceans. While Graham Hancock is no stranger to stirring up heated controversy among scientific experts, his books and television documentaries have intrigued millions of people around the world and influenced many to rethink their views about the origins of human civilization. 

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.

There is something profoundly romantic about lost civilizations. Davies peers through the cracks in the mainstream accounts of modern-day states to dazzle us with extraordinary stories of barely remembered pasts, and of the traces they left behind. This is Norman Davies at his best: sweeping narrative history packed with unexpected insights. Vanished Kingdoms will appeal to all fans of unconventional and thought-provoking history, from listeners of Niall Ferguson to Jared Diamond.

Con una revolución comenzó el universo, con otra abrimos los ojos de la consciencia y comenzó nuestra historia. Aprendimos a pensar, a producir, a luchar por el poder, a venerar dioses, a surcar los mares, a descifrar el firmamento, a transformar el mundo, a viajar por el espacio.

An award-winning Cambridge history professor “makes a forceful argument and tells a story with great verve” (The Wall Street Journal)—that the West is, and always has been, truly global. “Those archaic ‘Western Civ’ classes so many of us took in college should be updated, argues...

Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes listeners from Rome's pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted.

The epic story of the past, present, and future of world order, revealing how the decline of the West may be a good thing for the world. Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, the West has been in crisis. Social unrest, political polarization, and the rise of other great powers—especially...