Asimov's
Chronology of the World by Isaac Asimov Book Description: From the world's greatest science writer,
a history of the world from the Big Bang to 1945, told in irresistible
short takes and highlighted by a timeline.
Hardcover from HarperResource
Book Published: 06 November, 1991
A
Brief History of the Human Race by Michael Cook
Book Description: A global account of how and why human history
unfolded as it did from the rise of agriculture to the fall of the Twin
Towers.
Why has human history been crowded into the last few thousand years?
Why has it happened at all? Could it have happened in a radically different
way? What should we make of the disproportionate role of the West in shaping
the world we currently live in?
This witty, intelligent hopscotch through human history addresses these
questions and more. Michael Cook sifts the human career on earth for the
most telling nuggets and then uses them to elucidate the whole. From the
calendars of Mesoamerica and the temple courtesans of medieval India to
the intricacies of marriage among an aboriginal Australian tribe, Cook
explains the sometimes eccentric variety in human cultural expression.
He guides us from the prehistoric origins of human history across the globe
through the increasing unification of the world, first by Muslims and then
by European Christians in the modern period, illuminating the contingencies
that have governed broad historical change. 15 maps, 30 illustrations.
Hardcover from W.W. Norton & Company
Book Published: October, 2003
Corrupting
Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History by Peregrin Horden, Nicholas Purcell
Book Description: The Corrupting Sea is a history of the relationship
between people and their environments in the Mediterranean region over
some 3,000 years. It advocates a novel analysis of this relationship in
terms of microecologies and the often extensive networks to which they
belong. This is the first major work since Braudel's The Mediterranean
to address the problems of studying the area as a whole and on a long time-scale.
The authors emphasize the value of comparison between prehistory, Antiquity
and the Middle Ages. They draw on an exceptionally wide range of evidence
- literary works, documents, archaeology, scientific reports and social
anthropology.
The themes addressed include past conceptions of the Mediterranean,
its historiography, the history of primary production, the rhythms of exchange
and communication, the pace of environmental and technological change,
the geography of religion, and the contribution of Mediterranean social
anthropology to an assessment of the region's unity.
The book offers a provocative and innovative approach to the history
of the Mediterranean, explaining what has made Mediterranean history distinctive.
Paperback from Blackwell Publishers
Book Published: April, 2000
Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About
American History but Never Learned by Kenneth C. Davis
Listed under United States History
Guns,
Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
.
Life isn't fair--here's why: Since 1500, Europeans have, for better
and worse, called the tune that the world has danced to. In Guns, Germs,
and Steel, Jared Diamond explains the reasons why things worked out that
way. It is an elemental question, and Diamond is not nearly the first to
ask it. However, he performs a singular service by relying on scientific
fact rather than specious theories of European genetic superiority. Diamond,
a professor of physiology at UCLA, suggests that the geography of Eurasia
was best suited to farming, the domestication of animals, and the free
flow of information. The more populous cultures that developed as a result
had more complex forms of government and communication--and increased resistance
to disease. Finally, fragmented Europe harnessed the power of competitive
innovation in ways that China did not. (For example, the Europeans used
the Chinese invention of gunpowder to create guns and subjugate the New
World.) Diamond's book is complex and a bit overwhelming. But the thesis
he methodically puts forth--examining the "positive feedback loop" of farming,
then domestication, then population density, then innovation, and on and
on--makes sense. Written without favor, Guns, Germs, and Steel is good
global history. - Amazon.com Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Paperback: 480 pages
W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393317552; (April 1999)
Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester
Listed under Volcanos
Catastrophe:
A Quest for the Origins of the Modern World by David Keys
If Keys is correct - and a great number of authoritative sources believe
he is - much of CE history will be re-written in light of his findings.
Something happened in 535AD - and the sun went out for a year!
Hardcover - 343 pages (February 1, 2000)
Ballantine Books (Trd); ISBN: 0345408764
Cataclysm
: Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 B.C. by D. S. Allan, J. B. Delair
This book explores the probability that an an extraordinary event occured
involving some type of body entering our solar system and effecting each
planet and ultimately the earth causing major axis shift. None of the reviews
seem to mention Velikovsky, who first expounded this theory.
Paperback (October 1997)
Bear & Co; ISBN: 1879181428
Ages
in Chaos by Immanuel Velikovsky
Hardcover Reprint edition (June 2001)
Amereon Ltd; ISBN: 0848814975
Delivery delayed
Nathaniel's
Nutmeg Consider the humble jar of nutmeg pushed to the back of your kitchen
cupboard, among all the other spices that you hardly ever use. Would you
believe that nutmeg formed the basis for one of the most bitter international
conflicts of the 17th century, and was also intimately connected to the
rise to global pre-eminence of New York City? Strange but true; nutmeg
was one of the most prized commodities in Renaissance Europe, and its fascinating
story is told in Giles Milton's delightful book Nathaniel's Nutmeg.
The book deals with the competition between England and Holland for
possession of the spice- producing islands of South-East Asia throughout
the 17th century. Packed with stories of heroism, ambition, ruthlessness,
treachery, murder, torture and madness, Nathaniel's Nutmeg offers a compelling
story of European rivalry in the Tropics, thousands of miles from home,
and the mutual incomprehensibility which often comically characterised
relations between the Europeans and the local inhabitants of the prized
islands.
At the centre of the story lies Nathaniel Courthope, a trusty lieutenant
of the East India Company, who took and held the tiny nutmeg-producing
island of Run in the face of overwhelming Dutch opposition for more than
five years, before being treacherously murdered in 1620. Courthope's heroism
led to the English taking the Dutch colony of Manhattan in revenge for
the death of Courthope and the loss of Run. The subsequent peace deal between
the two nations gave Holland Run and the British Manhattan; New York was
born. As Milton wittily remarks, although Courthope's death "robbed England
of her nutmeg, it gave her the biggest of apples".
Inevitably inviting comparisons with Dava Sobel's Longitude, Nathaniel's
Nutmeg is a charming story, which throws light on a spicy, neglected slice
of early Europe's fascination with the East. --Jerry Brotton - Amazon.co.uk
Review by Giles
Milton Paperback from Penguin USA (Paper)
Book Published: 03 July, 2000
A History of Britain : At the Edge of the World, 3500 B.C.-1603 A.D by Simon Schama
Listed under English History
The Waning of the Renaissance, 1550-1640 (Intellectual History of
the West Series) by William James Bouwsma
Listed under Renaissance
Three
Critics of the Enlightenment by Henry Hardy (Editor), Isaiah, Sir Berlin
Paperback - 382 pages (November 15, 2000)
Princeton Univ Pr; ISBN: 0691057273
The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd by Richard Zacks
Listed under Pirates
How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western
Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It by Arthur Herman
Listed under Scottish History
