First Civilization

Three thousand years ago, kings on opposite sides of the known world called each other "brother." They traded tin and gold across thousands of miles of open sea. They sent their daughters to marry foreign rulers they would never meet. They wrote letters in a shared diplomatic language, demanding respect, negotiating treaties, and complaining about the quality of gifts. Then the whole system collapsed and none of it survived. The Late Bronze Age — roughly 1500 to 1200 BCE — was the first era of true international civilization. Egypt, the Hittite Empire, Babylonia, Assyria, and Mycenaean ...

Orphaned at six and sent to an orphanage, Jericho Rolland discovers an interstellar sim when he’s eight. Soon realizing actual trading like this will be the focus of his life. He applies his massive intellect and drive toward preparing himself for that goal. Knowing he can go to space at twelve, Jericho starts setting things up six months before his birthday. The only resistance he runs into is with the interstellar bank. The bank officials really don’t know who they are tangling with, but they find out much to their regret. At Twelve, when many of his almost always brilliant ancestors ...

The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! Over 1 million copies of the Three-Body Problem series sold in North America PRAISE FOR THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM SERIES: “A mind-bending epic.”—The New York Times “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.”—The Wall Street...

Who wore the first pants? Who painted the first masterpiece? Who first rode the horse? Who invented soap? This madcap adventure across ancient history uses everything from modern genetics to archaeology to uncover the geniuses behind these and other world-changing innovations. Who invented the...

The oldest stories ever written. The gods who came before all other gods. The myths that built every civilization that followed. Five thousand years ago, in the world's first cities, a civilization pressed its beliefs into clay. Those tablets contained the original versions of the stories the modern world thinks it knows — the Great Flood, the creation of humanity, the descent into the underworld, the hero who could not accept death. The Sumerians told these stories first, told them without apology, and told them with a brutal honesty about the nature of gods and humans that every ...

An out-of-work paleontologist stumbles on evidence that an ancient, non-human civilization that once ruled Earth has returned to reclaim the planet.

The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! WINNER OF THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL Over 1 million copies sold in North America “A mind-bending epic.”—The New York Times “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.”—The Wall Street Journal “Fascinating.”—TIME ...

In December 1872, a self-taught engraver named George Smith stood in front of the Prime Minister of Great Britain and read a story off a fragment of broken clay. A great flood. A man warned by a god. A boat, the animals, the mountaintop. The audience assumed they were hearing a Babylonian rewrite of Noah. They were hearing the source — older than Genesis, older than Homer, older than any text the Western canon had ever acknowledged. Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh. This is the book about the king, the poem, and the recovery. The historical Gilgamesh ruled the Sumerian city of Uruk ...

Six years after the breach event, the sun started transmitting. Commander Elena Vasquez returns to 0.31 AU aboard Helio-8 with one mission: receive what the photosphere has been trying to send. What arrives is not a signal. It's a record—four billion years of operational history from a stellar civilization network that has been watching this neighborhood since before complex life existed on Earth. The record carries a count. Forty-one coherent states, active and transmitting. And a boundary—a propagating threshold moving through the local stellar neighborhood for two centuries, ...

The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! Over 1 million copies of the Three-Body Problem series sold in North America PRAISE FOR THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM SERIES: “A mind-bending epic.”—The New York Times “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.”—The Wall Street...

Around 1200 BCE, the most advanced civilizations on Earth were destroyed in a single generation. The Hittite Empire — gone. Mycenaean Greece — gone. The great port of Ugarit — burned and never rebuilt. Trade networks that had connected the Mediterranean for centuries — collapsed. An entire world of palace kingdoms, international diplomacy, and bronze-age prosperity vanished in a cascade of fire, famine, and war. At the center of the destruction: a mysterious coalition of raiders the Egyptians called the Sea Peoples. Who were they? Where did they come from? And did they really bring ...

*NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* America's favorite astrophysicist has written the most entertaining and universally appealing book of his stellar career: a practical guide for dealing with Alien visitors, an exploration of how it might happen, and a cultural history of our fascination with...

Step into an immersive narrative history of human civilization and witness how everyday people shaped our world. Perfect for your daily commute or a focused learning session, this sweeping audio journey transports you from Ice Age campfires to the glowing screens of the digital era. Instead of...

The must-read exploration of the earliest human ghost stories from leading expert Irvine Finkel, author of The Ark Before Noah 'It's enthralling stuff, mixing the scholarly with the accessible and placing storytelling right at the heart of the human experience.' - History Revealed There are few...

The fires went out. The scribes stopped writing. And then, for three hundred years, silence. We call it a dark age because we lost sight of it—not because nothing happened. Behind that silence, a shattered world was quietly rebuilding itself into something its ancestors would never have recognized. The First Dark Age follows the survivors of history's most complete collapse: the people who lived through the fall of the Bronze Age and, slowly, built the classical world out of its wreckage. What you'll discover: How families fed themselves and held communities together after the palace ...

When people think of ancient Greece, images of philosophers such as Plato or Socrates often come to mind, as do great warriors like Pericles and Alexander the Great. But hundreds of years before Athens became a city, a Greek culture flourished and spread its tentacles throughout the Western Mediterranean region via trade and warfare. Scholars have termed this preclassical Greek culture the Mycenaean culture.

A 2026 Audie Awards finalist for Best Science Fiction! The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! This program is read by Jess Hong, who plays Jin Cheng in 3 Body Problem. Over 1 million copies of the Three-Body Problem series sold in North America. "[Jess] Hong, who stars in the...

Over 2,000 pages of action-packed military sci-fi adventure in one massive boxset! Humanity survived the end of the world. Unfortunately, the galaxy noticed. Major Ethan Irons thought surviving Earth's near-extinction was the worst thing that could happen to him. Then an alien fleet arrived, dragged humanity into a galactic war they didn't start, don't understand, and are spectacularly unqualified to win. Now Ethan finds himself fighting for the survival of the human race while navigating alien empires, ancient grudges, interstellar politics, and enough backstabbing to make Game of Thrones ...

Blending history, science, and culture, a stunning and highly engaging evolutionary story exploring how walking on two legs allowed humans to become the planet’s dominant species. Humans are the only mammals to walk on two, rather than four legs—a locomotion known as bipedalism. We strive to...

What if the greatest threat to humanity wasn't an alien civilization...but humanity itself? In a future where towering mega-cities hide the decay of civilization beneath gleaming skylines, the Earth is united under a powerful world government promising peace, security, and prosperity. But beneath the polished surface lies corruption, oppression, and a growing darkness that few dare acknowledge. Jeremiah Berg is the last person anyone would expect God to call. A quiet Old Testament professor haunted by personal tragedy and struggling with his faith, Jeremiah wants nothing more than to be ...