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Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence.
Like the alphabet, the calendar, or the zodiac, the periodic table of the chemical elements has a permanent place in our imagination. But aside from the handful of common ones (iron, carbon, copper, gold), the elements themselves remain wrapped in mystery. We do not know what most of them look like, how they exist in nature, how they got their names, or of what use they are to us.
Despite the recent rise of China to a position of dominance on the world economic stage, Chinese history remains an elusive subject. Yet it is this vast narrative of appalling loss, superhuman endeavor, and incredible invention that has made China the superpower it is today.
Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the 18th and 19th centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics - contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. This book is not just about Scotland: it is an exciting account of the origins of the modern world.
As the work at the heart of Christianity, the Bible is the spiritual guide for one out of every three people in the world. It is also the world's most widely distributed book, having been translated into over 2,000 languages, as well as the world's best-selling book, year after year. But the Bible is a complex work with a complicated and obscure history.
The Strange Order of Things is a pathbreaking investigation into homeostasis, the condition that regulates human physiology within the range that makes possible not only the survival but also the flourishing of life. Antonio Damasio makes clear that we descend biologically, psychologically, and even socially from a long lineage that begins with single living cells; that our minds and cultures are linked by an invisible thread to the ways and means of ancient unicellular life and other primitive life-forms.
Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence.
Like the alphabet, the calendar, or the zodiac, the periodic table of the chemical elements has a permanent place in our imagination. But aside from the handful of common ones (iron, carbon, copper, gold), the elements themselves remain wrapped in mystery. We do not know what most of them look like, how they exist in nature, how they got their names, or of what use they are to us.
Despite the recent rise of China to a position of dominance on the world economic stage, Chinese history remains an elusive subject. Yet it is this vast narrative of appalling loss, superhuman endeavor, and incredible invention that has made China the superpower it is today.
Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the 18th and 19th centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics - contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. This book is not just about Scotland: it is an exciting account of the origins of the modern world.
As the work at the heart of Christianity, the Bible is the spiritual guide for one out of every three people in the world. It is also the world's most widely distributed book, having been translated into over 2,000 languages, as well as the world's best-selling book, year after year. But the Bible is a complex work with a complicated and obscure history.
The Strange Order of Things is a pathbreaking investigation into homeostasis, the condition that regulates human physiology within the range that makes possible not only the survival but also the flourishing of life. Antonio Damasio makes clear that we descend biologically, psychologically, and even socially from a long lineage that begins with single living cells; that our minds and cultures are linked by an invisible thread to the ways and means of ancient unicellular life and other primitive life-forms.
Best-selling author Richard E. Rubenstein brings the past to life in this engrossing story of social, religious, and scientific revolution during one of the darkest periods in European history. When a group of Dark Ages scholars rediscovered the works of Aristotle, the great thinker's ideas ignited a firestorm of enlightened thought. This is the endlessly fascinating account of the pivotal period in history when the modern era took root.
This classic follows coffee's journey around the world, from London to Brazil, telling in fascinating detail and amusing anecdote the singular history of the legendary commodity - from the discovery that chewing on the beans were keeping goats awake in Yemen to the author's own experiences with the bean in 1935.
When acclaimed science writer Stefan Klein asks Nobel Prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffmann what sets scientists apart, Hoffmann says, "First and foremost, curiosity." In this collection of intimate conversations with 19 of the world's best-known scientists (including three Nobel Laureates), Klein lets us listen in as today's leading minds reveal what they still hope to discover - and how their paradigm-changing work entwines with their lives outside the lab.
This is the origin story of the airwaves - the foundational technology of the communications age - as told through the 40-year friendship of an entrepreneurial industrialist and a brilliant inventor. David Sarnoff, the head of RCA and equal parts Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, and William Randolph Hearst, was the greatest supporter of his friend, Edwin Armstrong, developer of the first amplifier, the modern radio transmitter, and FM radio.
Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.
Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how did it come to be? Even in an age of cloning and artificial biology, the remarkable truth remains: Nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we still missing a vital ingredient in its creation?
Sweeping and accessible, The Ruin of the Roman Empire captures the richness of late antique life and the colorful characters of the age, while offering insight into today's debates about barbarism, religion, empires, and their threatened borders.
Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes listeners from Rome's pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted.
In his most ambitious work yet, Shermer sets out to discover what drives humans' belief in life after death, focusing on recent scientific attempts to achieve immortality by radical life extentionists, extropians, transhumanists, cryonicists, and mind uploaders, along with utopians who have attempted to create heaven on earth.
Although Washington is often overlooked in most accounts of the period, this masterful new history from Pulitzer Prize winner Edward J. Larson brilliantly uncovers Washington's vital role in shaping the Convention - and shows how it was only with Washington’s support and his willingness to serve as President that the states were brought together and ratified the Constitution, thereby saving the country.
What is fascism? By focusing on the concrete, what the fascists did rather than what they said, the esteemed historian Robert O. Paxton answers this question for the first time. From the first violent uniformed bands beating up "enemies of the state", through Mussolini's rise to power, to Germany's fascist radicalization in World War II, Paxton shows clearly why fascists came to power in some countries and not others.
An upstart French duke who sets out to conquer the most powerful and unified kingdom in Christendom. An invasion force on a scale not seen since the days of the Romans. One of the bloodiest and most decisive battles ever fought.
Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.
The fabrication of weapons, the mastery of fire, and the technologies of clothing and shelter radically restructured the human body, enabling us to walk upright, shed our body hair, and migrate out of tropical Africa. Symbolic communication transformed human evolution from a slow biological process into a fast cultural process. The invention of agriculture revolutionized the relationship between humanity and the environment, and the technologies of interaction led to the birth of civilization. Precision machinery spawned the industrial revolution and the rise of nation-states; and in the next metamorphosis, digital technologies may well unite all of humanity for the benefit of future generations.
Synthesizing the findings of primatology, paleontology, archeology, history, and anthropology, Richard Currier reinterprets and retells the modern narrative of human evolution that began with the discovery of Lucy and other Australopithecus fossils. But the same forces that allowed us to integrate technology into every aspect of our daily lives have also brought us to the brink of planetary catastrophe. Unbound explains both how we got here and how human society must be transformed again to achieve a sustainable future.
Technology: "The deliberate modification of any natural object or substance with forethought to achieve a specific end or to serve a specific purpose."
This is the book Jared Diamond would have written, had Jared Diamond been deprived of vision or originality. It covers the cultural and, to a significant degree, the physical evolution of hominids from earlier life forms till the hopes and fears of the future. It is a successful compilation of good information and accepted theory, with a lot of well articulated declarations of the obvious, and, here and there, some juicy surprises. But lacking is any interesting focus or vision, other than, if we choose wisely, we can survive; if not... well, you know. It's the grandeur of human evolution in pedestrian wrap. I learned many good things, but I wish there had been more.
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