World

An exhilarating journey into the mind and spirit of a remarkable man, a legendary teacher, and a masterful storyteller, conducted by TV journalist Bill Moyers for their acclaimed PBS series....

From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity's creation and evolution that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us....

Bill Bryson has been an enormously popular author both for his travel books and for his books on the English language. Now, this beloved comic genius turns his attention to science...

For millennia the location of the Nile River’s headwaters was shrouded in mystery. In the 19th century, there was  a frenzy of interest in ancient Egypt. At the same time, European powers sent off waves of explorations intended to map the unknown corners of the globe....

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history....

The River of Doubt brings alive extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived....

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400....

Yuval Noah Harari returns with an original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity's future and our quest to upgrade humans into gods....

From his perspective in Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli's aim in this classic work was to resolve conflict with the ruling prince, Lorenzo de Medici....

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

This audiobook version of As A Man Thinketh is true to the original....

Meriwether Lewis and his partner, William Clark, endured incredible hardships and witnessed astounding sights on their 1803 cross-country trip to unexplored West....

The Emperor of All Maladies reveals the many faces of an iconic, shape-shifting disease that is the defining plague of our generation....

In this landmark biography of Winston Churchill based on extensive new material, the true genius of the man, statesman, and leader can finally be fully understood - by the best-selling, award-winning author of Napoleon and The Storm of War....

The dinosaurs. 66 million years ago, the Earth's most fearsome and spectacular creatures vanished. Today their extraordinary true story remains one of our planet's great mysteries. In this stunning narrative spanning more than 200 million years....

The evidence revealed in this book shows beyond reasonable doubt that an advanced civilization that flourished during the Ice Age was destroyed in the global cataclysms....

Throughout human history, certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst....

In 1307, as they struggled to secure their last strongholds in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Templars fell afoul of the vindictive and impulsive king of France....

Whether ancient, crumbling parchments or generated by Google, maps tell us things we want to know, not only about our current location but about the world in general....

Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power....

Here, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: He shows that before there was money, there was debt....

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

In 1528, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong. Of the 300 men who had embarked on the journey, only four survived....

The author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization....

A fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home....

The combination of mining, maritime, and lumbering history created a culture in the U.P. that is unique to the Midwest. Discover true stories of the rough and dangerous times of the Upper Peninsula frontier that are as enjoyable as they are educational. You'll find no conventional romantic or whitewashed history here. Instead, you will be astonished by the true hardships and facets of trying to settle a frontier sandwiched between the three Great Lakes. These minutes are populated by Native Americans and European immigrants, looking for their personal promised land.

 The Fate of Empires analyzes many of the commonly held traits of the world’s historic empires and demonstrates how the presence or absence of these can determine the outcome of these societies. The author isolates two main forces operating in advanced civilizations: the urge to reproduce as well as competition among members of society.  

In early 2020, the world was on edge. An ominous virus was spreading on different continents, and no one knew what the coming weeks would bring. Far from the hot spots, the cruise ship Zaandam, owned by Holland America, was preparing to sail from Buenos Aires, Argentina, loaded with 1,200 passengers—Americans, Europeans and South Americans, plus 600 crew. Within days, people aboard begin to fall sick. With only two doctors aboard and few medical supplies to test for or treat COVID-19, and with dwindling food and water, the ship wanders the oceans on an unthinkable journey. 

Historian William Sheehan and astronomer and planetary scientist Jim Bell combine their talents to tell a unique story of what we've learned by studying Mars through evolving technologies. What the eye sees as a mysterious red dot wandering through the sky becomes a blurry mirage of apparent seas, continents, and canals as viewed through Earth-based telescopes. 

Leon Trotsky was a Ukrainian-Russian Marxist revolutionary, political thinker, and political leader who lived from November 7, 1879 to August 21, 1940. He developed a variation of Marxism referred to as Trotskyism after being a communist ideologically. After the Tsarist monarchy was toppled in the February Revolution of 1917, Trotsky went back to Russia and signed up with the Bolshevik faction as a leader. He was a popular figure in the November 1917 October Revolution, which deposed the new Provisional Federal government, as head of the Petrograd Soviet.

World War II was an event that embroiled nearly half of the world's countries, and the events that played out permanently changed the course of world history and have ramifications even today. Whilst many books explain the events of World War II, this book focuses on why World War II occurred in the first place. From the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations to the Great Depression and the militaristic nature of specific countries—all the most important factors are included here in a concise manner, from both a historical context to Nazi Germany's incremental invasions.

A mysterious scientist by the name of David Anderson made an eventful trip to Romania in 1999. Dr. Anderson, who is credited by the U.S. government as having developed advanced time-warp field technology, established diplomatic connections on this trip to Romania where he also set up an advanced research facility dedicated to studying the mathematics of time travel. 

Contained in this book are short summaries of the stories of the great visionaries and great minds of humanity that changed the game and changed the world. Rather than information overload like regular history textbooks (focused on dates, facts, and place names), this book series tells the unique stories of the characters. The adversities and setbacks they faced. The moments of inspiration. Rare characteristics and not-so-well-known facts. See these stories from a different angle in a new, exciting way, with their most inspirational quotes.

The history of India is long and complicated. It dates back to thousands of years before Christ, according to historical analysts, and it involves wars, peoples, different spiritual movements, claims of independence, merging of empires, and various cultural aspects.

When Campbell & Clark, Scottish merchants based in India, dispatched an Indian ship hurriedly renamed the Sydney Cove to the colony of NSW in 1797, they were hoping to make their fortune. The ship's 'speculative' cargo included all kinds of products to entice the new colony's inhabitants, including 7,000 gallons of rum intended to be sold to the Rum Corp. But when the ship went down north of Van Diemen's Land, cargo master William Campbell and 16 other crew members decided to walk the 600 miles to Sydney Town to get help and rescue crew and cargo. 

James Marsh tells of his evolution from a troubled childhood to a long career in publishing that culminated in the creation of The Canadian Encyclopedia—what one reviewer called “the intellectual equivalent of the building of the CPR.” Through friendships, curiosity, the insights of a charismatic psychiatrist, his passion for books, and the intimate encounters with the authors he met, he championed a diverse and inclusive view of Canada, which was used to draw the great minds of an impossible nation together in a common national enterprise.

In June 1631, pirates from Algiers and armed troops of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, led by the notorious pirate captain Morat Rais, stormed ashore at the little harbor village of Baltimore in West Cork. They captured almost all the villagers and bore them away to a life of slavery in North Africa. The prisoners were destined for a variety of fates—some would live out their days chained to the oars as galley slaves, while others would spend long years in the scented seclusion of the harem or within the walls of the Sultan's palace. 

From the rise of Sargon of Akkad, who in the third millennium BCE ruled what is now Iraq and Syria, to the collapse of the great European empires in the twentieth century, the empire has been the dominant form of power in history. Dominic Lieven’s expansive book explores strengths and failings of the human beings who held those empires together (or let them crumble). He projects the power, terror, magnificence, and confidence of imperial monarchy, tracking what they had in common as well as what made some rise to glory and others fail spectacularly.

Crimes Against History takes a global approach to the extreme forms of censorship to which history and historians have been subjected through the ages. The book opens by considering the varieties of censorship, from suppression, dismissal, and defamation to persecution and murder. 

Don't think that because it is such a small country with only about 17 million people, it should be neglected. The Netherlands has a long history, with a high influence on our cultures, trading routes, the stock market, business, and art. The Dutch were all over the world. They "owned" and colonized a big portion of what was then the known world. They were among the first settlers, had the biggest haven, and biggest fleet for some time. The Dutch East-Indian Trading Company, or VOC, is probably the biggest or at least one of the biggest companies that has ever existed.