Civilisation

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history. Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped...

Societies that ignore social disintegration and collapsing birth rates are putting their future in peril. So why are we ignoring the signs? ?In The Origin Of Politics, Nicholas Wade explains how our political systems compete with a more ancient set of rules for organizing society—those...

Here in a single volume is the entire, unabridged recording of Gibbon's masterpiece....

Civilization was born 8,000 years ago, between the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, when migrants from the surrounding mountains and deserts began to create increasingly sophisticated urban societies. In the cities that they built, half of human history took place. In Babylon...

A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own....

In this landmark study of Italy from the 14th through the early 16th centuries, Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt chronicles the rise of Florence and Venice as powerful city-states....

All golden ages are marked by periods of spectacular cultural flourishing, scientific exploration, technological achievement and economic growth; yet no two are the same. Their beliefs, societies and place in the wider world all vary. Despite this, all previous golden ages have ended, whether it...

Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the 18th and 19th centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine...

This audiobook tells the gripping story of what happened after the Bronze Age collapsed—why some civilizations endured, why some gave way to new ones, and why some disappeared forever.

This audiobook narrated by acclaimed archaeologist and best-selling author Eric Cline offers a breathtaking account of how the collapse of an ancient civilized world ushered in the first Dark Ages....

By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean is nothing less than the story of how humans first started building the globalized world we know today. Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, it is a tale covering more than 10,000 years, from the origins of farming around 9000 BC to the expansion of...

Examines the Anunnaki gods’ evolving relationships with humanity, their power struggles, and the details of their nuclear war on Earth Analyzes the crisis and rationale behind the Anunnaki decision to nuke 5 cities in the Jordan plain, resulting in the obliteration of Sumerian civilization...

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...

Brought to you by Penguin. From breakups that ended empires to naps that sank ships, 10 Mistakes That Changed History reveals how overlooked historical errors are responsible for some of the most era-defining events of the past. Featuring many of the most recognisable characters and episodes in...

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...

Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen....

In just over a hundred years - from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 - the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East....

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....

In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more....

A riveting and authoritative history of the single most important event in English history: The Norman Conquest....

The author of Cod and The Basque History of the World takes an extraordinary look at an ordinary substance — salt, the only rock humans eat — and how it has shaped civilization from the very beginning....

The epic story of the imperial rivalry between two of the greatest empires of the ancient world—Parthian and Persian—and how they rose and eventually fell. The Roman empire shaped the culture of the Western world against which all other great powers are compared. Stretching from the north of...

A sensational, interdisciplinary work which entirely reorients our understanding of Europe from 10,000 BC to the time of the Vikings In this magnificent book, distinguished archaeologist Barry Cunliffe reframes our entire conception of early European history, from prehistory through the ancient...

Victor Davis Hanson has given us painstakingly researched and pathbreaking accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the 21st century. Now he juxtaposes an ancient conflict with our most urgent modern concerns to create his most engrossing work to date, A War Like No Other. Hanson...

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...

Audiobook narrated by the author. “A spellbinding tour de force!” —Walter Scheidel, author of What Is Ancient History? “This is non-fiction storytelling at its finest.” —Eric H. Cline, author of 1177 B.C. The creator of the hit podcast Tides of History offers a new look at...

“A brilliant and visionary book.” —Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America What has happened to the nation-state? From a prize-winning writer, a sweeping history of this most unquestioned of modern structures and a bold imagining of its future Until recently, the system of nation-states...

"In his joyful new book, Aldo Cazzullo invites us, through sparkling prose, to dive into some of the greatest stories ever told.” —James Martin, SJ, New York Times bestselling author of Work in Progress and Learning to Pray A #1 bestselling sensation in Italy As a way of connecting with his...

Twenty kings. Twenty centuries. Twenty murders that bent the arc of civilization. From Julius Caesar's assassination on the Ides of March to King Faisal's shooting in a Riyadh palace, the killing of a sovereign has never been merely the end of a life — it has always been the beginning of a transformation. Regicide traces one pivotal royal murder from each century between the 1st and the 20th, revealing the systemic failures, factional conspiracies, and human blind spots that brought down the most powerful leaders on earth.

For thousands of years, humans have reported encounters with gods, angels, demons, spirits, and other non-human intelligences. Modern science dismissed them as hallucinations. Religion demanded belief. Both explanations failed."Beyond the Gods" offers a third path.