Empfehlungen basierend auf "A Little History of the World (Little Histories)"

Neil MacGregor's A History of the World in 100 Objects takes a bold, original approach to human history, exploring past civilizations through the objects that defined them. Encompassing a grand sweep of human history, A History of the World in 100 Objects begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with objects which characterise the world we live in today. Seen through MacGregor's eyes, history is a kaleidoscope - shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined. A stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people; Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency; and an early Victorian tea-set speaks to us about the impact of empire. An intellectual and visual feast, this is one of the most engrossing and unusual history books published in years. 'Brilliant, engagingly written, deeply researched' Mary Beard, Guardian 'A triumph: hugely popular, and rightly lauded as one of the most effective and intellectually ambitious initiatives in the making of 'public history' for many decades' Sunday Telegraph 'Highly intelligent, delightfully written and utterly absorbing ' Timothy Clifford, Spectator 'This is a story book, vivid and witty, shining with insights, connections, shocks and delights' Gillian Reynolds Daily Telegraph

THIS BOOK ANSWERS THE MOST OBVIOUS, THE MOST IMPORTANT, YET THE MOST DIFFICULT QUESTION ABOUT HUMAN HISTORY: WHY HISTORY UNFOLDED SO DIFFERENTLY ON DIFFERENT CONTINENTS. GEOGRAPHY AND BIOGRAPHY, NOT RACE, MOULDED THE CONTRASTING FATES OF EUROPEANS, ASIANS, NATIVE AMERICANS, SUB-SAHARAN AFRICANS, AND ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS. AN AMBITIOUS SYNTHESIS OF HISTORY, BIOLOGY, ECOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS, GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT AND HUMANE WORKS OF POPULAR SCIENCE.

Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, Cundill History Prize, Fage and Oliver Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Pius Adesanmi Memorial AwardWinner of the Historical Writers' Association Non-Fiction Crown 2020Winner of the American Historical Association's Jerry Bentley Prize in World History 2020Winner of the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding 2019An Observer and Wall Street Journal Book of the Year 2019A groundbreaking history that will transform our view of West AfricaBy the time of the 'Scramble for Africa' in the late nineteenth century, Africa had already been globally connected for many centuries. Its gold had fuelled the economies of Europe and Islamic world since around 1000, and its sophisticated kingdoms had traded with Europeans along the coasts from Senegal down to Angola since the fifteenth century. Until at least 1650, this was a trade of equals, using a variety of currencies - most importantly the cowrie shells imported from the Maldives, and the nzimbu shells imported from Brazil.Toby Green's groundbreaking new book transforms our view of West and West-Central Africa. It reconstructs the world of kingdoms whose existence (like those of Europe) revolved around warfare, taxation, trade, diplomacy, complex religious beliefs, royal display and extravagance, and the production of art.Over time, the relationship between Africa and Europe revolved ever more around the trade in slaves, damaging Africa's relative political and economic power as the terms of monetary exchange shifted drastically in Europe's favour. In spite of these growing capital imbalances, longstanding contacts ensured remarkable connections between the Age of Revolution in Europe and America and the birth of a revolutionary nineteenth century in Africa.A Fistful of Shells draws not just on written histories, but on archival research in nine countries, on art, praise-singers, oral history, archaeology, letters, and the author's personal experience to create a new perspective on the history of one of the world's most important regions.'Astonishing, staggering' Ben Okri, Daily Telegraph

For thirty years Ben Kiernan has been deeply involved in the study of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in unearthing confidential documentation of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. His writings have transformed our understanding not only of twentieth-century Cambodia but also of the historical phenomenon of genocide. This new book—the first global history of genocide and extermination from ancient times—is among his most important achievements. Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides.

Peter Watson's hugely ambitious and stimulating history of ideas from deep antiquity to the present day—from the invention of writing, mathematics, science, and philosophy to the rise of such concepts as the law, sacrifice, democracy, and the soul—offers an illuminated path to a greater understanding of our world and ourselves.

Compiled by a team of leading historians, this is a wonderfully rich, lavishly illustrated history of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The reader is taken on a journey from prehistoric times to the present day, examining such topics as the spread of literacy, the development of transport, and the evolution of country houses on the way. British cities are brought to life in artwork reconstructions that take the reader back to the Dublin of the 18th century or London in the 1850s. Scholarly yet accessible, this is the ideal introduction to British and Irish history.

This vivid and and comprehensive account of the politics, religion, and culture of England in the century and a half after the Norman Conquest lays bare the patterns of everyday life, and increases our understanding of medieval society at a time when England was more closely tied to Europe than ever before. This was a period in which the ruling dynasty and military aristocracy were deeply enmeshed with the politics and culture of France. The book describes their conflicts and their preoccupations: the sense of honour, the role of violence, and the glitter of tournament, heraldry, and Arthurian romance. The author explores the mechanics of their government, and analyses the part played by the Church at a time of radical developments in religious life and organization. He investigates the role of ordinary men and women: the fundamental importance of the peasant economy, the growing urban and commercial arenas; and also their outlook on the world, including their views on the past; on sexuality; on animals; on death, the undead and the occult. The result is a fascinating and complex account of a period which begins with conquest and ends in assimilation.

A book that revolutionised our understanding of English social history. E. P. Thompson shows how the English working class emerged through the degradations of the industrial revolution to create a culture and political consciousness of enormous vitality.

A magisterial history that recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness. One of the formative periods of European and world history, the Enlightenment is the fountainhead of modern secular Western values: religious tolerance, freedom of thought, speech and the press, of rationality and evidence-based argument. Yet why, over three hundred years after it began, is the Enlightenment so profoundly misunderstood as controversial, the expression of soulless calculation? The answer may be that, to an extraordinary extent, we have accepted the account of the Enlightenment given by its conservative enemies: that enlightenment necessarily implied hostility to religion or support for an unfettered free market, or that this was “the best of all possible worlds”. Ritchie Robertson goes back into the “long eighteenth century,” from approximately 1680 to 1790, to reveal what this much-debated period was really about. Robertson returns to the era’s original texts to show that above all, the Enlightenment was really about increasing human happiness – in this world rather than the next – by promoting scientific inquiry and reasoned argument. In so doing Robertson chronicles the campaigns mounted by some Enlightened figures against evils like capital punishment, judicial torture, serfdom and witchcraft trials, featuring the experiences of major figures like Voltaire and Diderot alongside ordinary people who lived through this extraordinary moment. In answering the question 'What is Enlightenment?' in 1784, Kant famously urged men and women above all to “have the courage to use your own intellect”. Robertson shows how the thinkers of the Enlightenment did just that, seeking a well-rounded understanding of humanity in which reason was balanced with emotion and sensibility. Drawing on philosophy, theology, historiography and literature across the major western European languages, The Enlightenment is a master-class in big picture history about the foundational epoch of modern times. 

Imagine having 5,000 years of human history's most amazing artworks at your fingertips! Go on a trip through the famous Metropolitan Museum of Art without ever leaving your home! Prepare to explore the treasures of the world's civilisations-from ancient Egyptian amulets, Mayan jewellery, and prehistoric tools-to Medieval tapestries, Renaissance suits of armour, and modern-day baseball cards. Each page brings you closer to the past as you learn about the people of different ages through the objects they left behind. Discover hand-picked highlights of the museum's huge collection as you travel through history, one incredible object at a time. This book combines exclusive Met photography with colourful and quirky illustrations in a resource that parents can trust, with a design that kids will love. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York