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Signs of Civilisation
- How Punctuation Changed History
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 4 hrs and 3 mins
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Signs of Civilisation
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Publisher's summary
Punctuation is not only an important part of our language code; an advanced system of punctuation has been a driving force in our entire Western Civilisation. Nothing less.
With the invention of printing, reading books moved from being an act performed only by priests and aristocrats into an individual, even private activity. This change helped spark the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution - in which punctuation played a crucial role. As long as texts were read out loud by only an educated elite there was no need for punctuation to mark pauses, full stops or questions.
So punctuation - the full stop, the comma, the exclamation mark, the question mark and the semicolon - helped shape modern day Europe as we know it.
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- Word Craft for Fast Times
- By: Roy Peter Clark
- Narrated by: Roy Peter Clark
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4 out of 5 stars 68
In How to Write Short , Roy Peter Clark turns his attention to the art of painting a thousand pictures with just a few words. Short forms of writing have always existed - from ship logs and telegrams to prayers and haikus. But in this ever-changing Internet age, short-form writing has become an essential skill. Clark covers how to write effective and powerful titles, headlines, essays, sales pitches, Tweets, letters, and even self-descriptions for online dating services.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Ironically long
- By Amazon Customer on 03-14-16
By: Roy Peter Clark
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The Riddle of the Labyrinth
- The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
- By: Margalit Fox
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 145
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 131
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Story4 out of 5 stars 130
In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece's Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe's earliest written records.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Discovery and Translation of Linear B Script
- By Sires on 01-11-14
By: Margalit Fox
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Memory Craft
- Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
- By: Lynne Kelly
- Narrated by: Nancy Linari
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story5 out of 5 stars 26
Groundbreaking anthropologist and memory champion Lynne Kelly reveals how we can use ancient and traditional mnemonic methods to enhance and expand our memory.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Best
- By Phil F. on 01-31-22
By: Lynne Kelly
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The Written World
- The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization
- By: Martin Puchner
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 88
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 78
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 77
Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the powerful role stories and literature have played in creating the world we have today. Puchner introduces us to numerous visionaries as he explores 16 foundational texts selected from more than 4,000 years of world literature and reveals how writing has inspired the rise and fall of empires and nations, the spark of philosophical and political ideas, and the birth of religious beliefs. Indeed, literature has touched generations and changed the course of history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Powerful and illuminating!
- By Gloria J. Petit-Clair on 12-04-17
By: Martin Puchner
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Notes on a Century
- Reflections of a Middle East Historian
- By: Bernard Lewis, Buntzie Ellis Churchill
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
Few historians end up as historical actors in their own right, but Bernard Lewis has both witnessed and participated in some of the key events of the last century. When we think of the Middle East, we see it in terms that he defined and articulated.In this exceptional memoir he shares stories of his wartime service in London and Cairo, decrypting intercepts for MI6, with sometimes unexpected consequences. After the war, he was the first Western scholar ever invited into the Ottoman archives in Istanbul.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Can't Get Enough of the Book
- By Sanford H. on 12-11-13
By: Bernard Lewis, and others
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Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
- The Untold History of English
- By: John McWhorter
- Narrated by: John McWhorter
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 3,995
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,375
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Story4 out of 5 stars 3,351
A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar. Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great for casual linguists
- By Bertie on 01-11-10
By: John McWhorter
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The Art of Nonfiction
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 145
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 88
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Story4 out of 5 stars 85
Rand takes listeners step by step through the writing process, providing insightful observations and invaluable techniques along the way. She discusses the psychological aspects of writing and the roles played by the conscious and subconscious mind. She talks about articles and books, explaining how to select a subject and theme, how to identify your audience, and how to write the first draft.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Content, but the narrator is annoying
- By Ms on 01-26-09
By: Ayn Rand
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The Prodigal Tongue
- The Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English
- By: Lynne Murphy
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
"If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd sound like an American." "English accents are the sexiest." "Americans have ruined the English language." "Technology means everyone will have to speak the same English." Such claims about the English language are often repeated but rarely examined. Professor Lynne Murphy is on the linguistic front line. In The Prodigal Tongue she explores the fiction and reality of the special relationship between British and American English.
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2 out of 5 stars
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TOO MUCH BITTERNESS
- By Tina on 08-27-20
By: Lynne Murphy
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The Pun Also Rises
- How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics
- By: John Pollack
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
The Pun Also Rises is an authoritative yet playful exploration of a practice that is common, in one form or another, to virtually every language on earth. At once entertaining and educational, this engaging book answers fundamental questions: Just what is a pun, and why do people make them? How did punning impact the development of human language, and how did that drive creativity and progress? And why, after centuries of decline, does the pun still matter?
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3 out of 5 stars
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Punderful Little Book
- By B. Lane on 01-10-13
By: John Pollack
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Babel No More
- The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners
- By: Michael Erard
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4 out of 5 stars 45
We all learn at least one language as children. But what does it take to learn six languages...or seventy? In Babel No More, Michael Erard, "a monolingual with benefits," sets out on a quest to meet language superlearners and make sense of their mental powers. On the way he uncovers the secrets of historical figures like Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who was said to speak seventy-two languages; Emil Krebs, a pugnacious German diplomat, who spoke sixty-eight languages; and Lomb Kat, a Hungarian who taught herself Russian by reading Russian romance novels.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Heavy on anecdote, light on science
- By S. Yates on 07-15-16
By: Michael Erard
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Six Walks in the Fictional Woods
- By: Umberto Eco
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 79
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 78
In this exhilarating book, we accompany Umberto Eco as he explores the intricacies of fictional form and method. Using examples ranging from fairy tales and Flaubert, Poe and Mickey Spillane, Eco draws us in by means of a novelist's techniques, making us his collaborators in the creation of his text and in the investigation of some of fiction's most basic mechanisms.
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5 out of 5 stars
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big ideas presented simply
- By Ashton on 01-31-14
By: Umberto Eco
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How to Speak and Write Correctly
- By: Joseph Devlin
- Narrated by: Shawn Grisden
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
This book has no pretension about it whatever -- it is neither a Manual of Rhetoric, expatiating on the dogmas of style, nor a Grammar full of arbitrary rules and exceptions. It is merely an effort to help ordinary, everyday people to express themselves in ordinary, everyday language, in a proper manner.
By: Joseph Devlin
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Cultural Amnesia
- Notes in the Margin of My Time
- By: Clive James
- Narrated by: Clive James
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 102
From Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Charlie Chaplin, this varied and unfailingly absorbing book is both story and history, both public memoir and personal record - and provides an essential field-guide to the vast movements of taste, intellect, politics and delusion that helped to prepare the times we live in now.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very enjoyable and well narrated
- By Larbi on 05-18-08
By: Clive James
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Making History
- The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past
- By: Richard Cohen
- Narrated by: Richard Cohen
- Length: 26 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
There are many stories we can spin about previous ages, but which accounts get told? And by whom? Is there even such a thing as “objective” history? In this “witty, wise, and elegant” (The Spectator), book, Richard Cohen reveals how professional historians and other equally significant witnesses, such as the writers of the Bible, novelists, and political propagandists, influence what becomes the accepted record. Cohen argues, for example, that some historians are practitioners of “Bad History” and twist reality to glorify themselves or their country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Missing 20 pages from book
- By Rick, Austin on 04-23-22
By: Richard Cohen
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The Road to Monticello
- The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson
- By: Kevin J. Hayes
- Narrated by: David Baker
- Length: 25 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
Thomas Jefferson was an avid book-collector, a voracious reader, and a gifted writer - a man who prided himself on his knowledge of classical and modern languages and whose marginal annotations include quotations from Euripides, Herodotus, and Milton. And yet there has never been a literary life of our most literary president.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Very Boring Book
- By Greg on 05-13-14
By: Kevin J. Hayes
What listeners say about Signs of Civilisation
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jaran Alexander
- 04-23-23
Fascinating story, passionate author
History of punctuation is something that's I never would've thought to care about, but the author makes you interested in the story he's telling. You can tell that he's passionate about the rules of written language (especially commas), and has done his research very well.
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