Catalog Search Results
Author
Formats
Summary
"A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution-from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state," political violence, and social inequality-and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike--either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told,...
Author
Summary
"A magisterial effort packed with insight and written with clarity and enthusiasm. It's also the deal of the year--the equivalent of a year's college course by an engaging, brilliant professor, all for the price of a book." --
Who Hasn't Gazed upon the abandoned temples of Angkor Wat or the jungle-choked cities of the Maya and wondered, could the same fate happen to us? In this riveting book, Jared Diamond--whose Guns, Germs, and Steel revolutionized...
Author
Summary
"With a new introduction by Anthony Arnove, this edition of the classic national bestseller chronicles American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official narrative taught in schools--with its emphasis on great men in high places-- to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History of the United States is the only volume to tell America's story from...
Author
Formats
Summary
"Most of us give little thought to the back of the book-it's just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history, hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. In the pages of the index, we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. Here, for the first time, is the...
8) Don't know much about history: everything you need to know about American history, but never learned
Author
Series
Formats
Summary
"From Columbus through to the twenty-first century, Don't Know Much About History takes readers on a tour through more than 500 years of American life. Drawing on the latest scholarship and new archaeological discoveries, Davis presents a thorough overview of American history that is exciting, interesting and fun to learn"--Publisher's description.
Author
Summary
A collection of speeches, letters, poems, and songs that reflect key political events in United States history, including documents on slave revolts, presidential speeches, writings both for and against various military conflicts, and speeches supporting equal rights for gay and lesbian families.
Author
Summary
"In his international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in his third book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crises while adopting selective changes -- a coping mechanism more commonly associated with individuals recovering from personal crises. Diamond compares how six countries have survived recent upheavals...
Summary
At first glance Brazil appears to be an alluring playground of exciting carnivals, sultry samba, divine football and a vibrantly diverse people. But behind this dazzling facade lies a disturbing story of historys largest-ever slave population. Astonishingly Brazil, a Portuguese colony, received ten-times more African slaves than the numbers transported to North America. This programme looks at those estimated 4 million people with whose blood, sweat...
Author
Summary
"In The Fifth Beginning, archeologist Robert Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity. In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author examines the long-term processes that resulted in a definitive no-turning-back change for the organization...
Author
Summary
Examines "the lives of contemporary archaeologists as they sweat under the sun for clues to the puzzle of our past. Johnson digs and drinks alongside archaeologists, chases them through the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and even Machu Picchu, and excavates their lives. Her subjects share stories we rarely read in history books, about slaves and Ice Age hunters, ordinary soldiers of the American Revolution, children of the first century, Chinese woman...
Author
Summary
How did marriage, considered a religious duty in medieval Europe, become a venue for personal fulfillment in contemporary America? How did the notion of romantic love, a novelty in the Middle Ages, become a prerequisite for marriage today? And, if the original purpose of marriage was procreation, what exactly is the purpose of marriage for women now?
Combining "a scholar's rigor and a storyteller's craft"(San Jose Mercury News), distinguished cultural...
Author
Summary
"What would you wear to war? How would you dress for a winter mission in the open cockpit of a Russian bomber plane? At a fashion show in Occupied Paris? Singing in Harlem, or on fire watch in Tokyo.? Ready for Action is a unique, illustrated insight into the experiences of women worldwide during World War Two and its aftermath. The history of ten tumultuous years is reflected in clothes, fashion, accessories and uniforms. As housewives, fighters,...
Author
Summary
"A history of the Flat Earth movement and a look at the recent boom in conspiratorial thinking in America"--
Since 2015 there has been a spectacular boom in a centuries-old delusion: that the earth is flat. Weill draws a direct line from today's conspiratorial moment, brimming not just with Flat Earthers but also anti-vaxxers and QAnon followers, back to the early days of Flat Earth theory in the 1830s. When faced with a complicated world out of...