Showing results by author "Charles River Editors" in All Categories

Though scarcely mentioned in the world of early 21st century politics, Manchuria represented a key region of Asia during the first half of the 20th century. Once the heartland of the fierce Manchu empire, this northeastern Chinese region's rich natural resources made it a prize for nations in the process of entering the modern age, and three ambitious nations in the midst of such a transformation lay close enough to Manchuria to attempt to claim it: Japan, Russia, and China.

The early history of our planet covers such vast stretches of time that years, centuries, and even millennia become virtually meaningless. Instead, paleontologists and scientists who study geochronology divide time into periods and eras. The current view of science is that planet Earth is around 4.6 billion years old. The first four billion years of its development are known as the Precambrian period.

Armenian Myths and Legends: The History of the Mythology and Folk Tales from Armenia looks at the stories that came from Armenia in ancient times, including their influences from other cultures. You will learn about Armenian mythology like never before.

Much of what is known of the Norse myths comes from the 10th century onwards. Until this time and, indeed, for centuries afterwards, Norse culture (particularly that of Iceland, where the myths were eventually transcribed) was an oral culture. In fact, in all Scandinavian countries well into the thirteenth century laws were memorized by officials known as “Lawspeakers” who recited them at the “Thing.” The Thing was the legislative assembly in Scandinavia “held for judicial purposes”. One of the most famous of these lawspeakers was the Icelander Snorri Sturluson.

Today, the world is in the midst of the transformative and ever-developing Digital Age, otherwise referred to as the “Age of Information.” It has been an unprecedented, remarkable, and explosive era marked by social media and computer-generated imagery (and with it, deep fakes), among other novel, previously unimaginable concepts. The bulky monitors and blocky towers of personal computers and laptops, which were once upon a time considered fashionable, futuristic contraptions, have since been replaced with a sleek and stylish array.

People’s timeless captivation with those supposedly endowed with supernatural powers - these gifted individuals oftentimes regarded as gods walking among everyone else - is a fascinating phenomenon in itself. Soothsayers and clairvoyants were particularly revered in past centuries, even by royals, nobles, and other influential figures, who placed oracles, mediums, and mystics in their retinues and sought counsel from them on a regular basis.

The current view of science is that Earth is around 4.6 billion years old, and the first 4 billion years of its development are known as the Precambrian period. For the first billion years or so, there was no life in Earth. Then the first single-celled life-forms, early bacteria and algae, began to emerge.

Spies are a feature of countless works of fiction in which they often discover secrets on which the fate of nations hang in the balance. Reality is generally rather more mundane as spies often gather low-level intelligence that only makes sense when it is examined by analysts and compared to information from other sources. Espionage provides clues to what the enemy is planning, but on its own it rarely changes the course of a war. Moreover, real spies are generally anonymous and not the bold, swashbuckling action heroes depicted in fiction.

The modern day city of Guangzhou is located in the mountainous region of south China. Near the Baiyun Mountains that rise from the edge of the city and the eastern banks of the Pearl River (Zhujiang), the city today covers approximately 7, 400 square kilometers. The location of the city provides it the opportunity to oversee the delta of the Pearl River, which is China’s third largest river.

For centuries, Christians and Muslims were embroiled in one of the most infamous territorial disputes of all time, viciously and relentlessly battling one another for the Holy Land. In the heart of Jerusalem sat one of the shining jewels of the Christian faith - the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Legend has it that this was where their Savior had been buried before his fabled resurrection. What was more, it was said to house the very cross Jesus Christ had died upon.

Gujarat is one of the most storied sites in a storied area. Many groups and empires ruled India or tried to, and Gujarat was the power center for the region’s oldest of all, the Indus Valley Civilization. Gujarat also played an instrumental role in India’s greatest ancient empire. During the last centuries of the first millennium BCE, most of the Mediterranean basin and the Near East were either directly or indirectly under the influence of Hellenism.

Over the course of the 19th century, the people of Sicily found themselves at the center of a struggle for freedom, one that ended up being long and often very bloody. It was during these crucial years of struggle that the Sicilian mafia, La Cosa Nostra ("Our Thing"), started to take shape. Cosa Nostra: The Notorious History and Legacy of the Sicilian Mafia examines how the world’s most famous mob formed, its inner workings, and the events that made it feared around the world.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) is one of the most famous Americans in history and one of the country's most revered presidents. Schoolchildren can recite the life story of Lincoln, the "Westerner" who educated himself and became a self-made man, rising from lawyer to leader of the new Republican Party before becoming the 16th President of the United States.

Modern perceptions of Classical Greece are almost invariably based on Athens and Sparta, but there are perhaps few areas as consistently undervalued as the island of Rhodes. Although solidly part of the Greek world for as long as there has been one, Rhodes, located just off the coast of Asia Minor, was also from its earliest times a port opening to the civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean, and Rhodes was involved in every significant moment in ancient Greek history.

During the first half of the first millennium CE, an empire arose in Persia that extended its power and influence to Mesopotamia in the east, Arabia in the south, the Caucasus Mountains in the north, and as far east as India. This empire, known alternatively as the Sasanian Empire or Sassanid Empire, was the last of three great dynasties in Persia before the rise of Islam. In fact, many scholars consider the Sasanian Empire to be the last great empire of the ancient Near East.

The spy novel emerged from the intrigues of the mid-20th century for good reason. The war with the Third Reich involved an unseen cloak-and-dagger struggle between the participants, but beyond that, an even larger and longer contest took place in the shadows. The men responsible for this unprecedented leaking of life-or-death information would enter history as the Cambridge Five - though in fact, they may have been only the core of a much larger group.

Patagonia is in the southernmost region of South America, comprising about 400,000 square miles going from the Colorado River in the north to the Tierra del Fuego archipelago in the south. Longitudinally, it covers the whole continental soil, going from the Atlantic shore to the Pacific’s waters, including a few islands near the coast, part of the South American plate.

The Romans were master builders, and much of what they built has stood the test of time. Throughout their vast empire, they have left grand structures, from the Forum and Pantheon in Rome, to the theatres and hippodromes of North Africa, and the triumphal gates in Anatolia and France. Wherever they went, the Romans built imposing structures to show their power and ability, and one of their most impressive constructions was built on the northernmost fringe of the empire.

Shirley Temple remains the most famous child star of all time, but even this designation fails to reflect the magnitude of her popularity during the era in which she worked. While it is true that she was not the first child actor to reach Hollywood fame, she was the first - and to this day, perhaps the only - star who rose to the very pinnacle of the Hollywood elite before she even turned 10 years of age. For this reason, it is no exaggeration to view Shirley as the progenitor for all of the child actors that succeeded her.

Caesar is still remembered for winning a civil war and helping bring about the end of the Roman Republic, leaving a line of emperors in its place, but it’s quite possible that none of what Caesar did would’ve happened without the template for such actions being set 40 years earlier.