Changed Civilization

Now featuring a new preface by Peter Thiel Two renowned investment advisors and authors of the bestseller The Great Reckoning bring to light both currents of disaster and the potential for prosperity and renewal in the face of radical changes in human history as we move into the next century...

In Here Comes the Sun, world-renowned author Bill McKibben tells the story of our sudden spike in power from the sun and wind. McKibben traces the arrival of plentiful, inexpensive solar energy, which, if it accelerates, gives us a chance not just to limit climate change’s damage, but to reorder the world on saner and more humane grounds. Getting there means overcoming obstacles like Big Oil, but McKibben sees a chance for a new civilization: one that looks up to the sun, every day, as the star that fuels our world.

In his million-copy bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now in this brilliant companion volume, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What...

“In the modern tradition of Big Books of human history like Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens and David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, Goliath’s Curse provides a novel theory of civilizational development. . . . [It] feels something like reading the French economist Thomas...

Combining rigorous research with myth and folklore, Alexandria is an authoritative history of a city that has shaped our modern world. Soon after being founded by Alexander the Great, Alexandria became the crucible of cultural exchange between East and West for millennia and the undisputed global capital of knowledge. It was at the forefront of human progress, but it also witnessed brutal natural disasters, plagues, crusades, and violence.

New York Times bestselling author Simon Winchester returns with a thought-provoking history of the wind, written in his edifying and entertaining style. What is going on with our atmosphere? The headlines are filled with news of devastating hurricanes, murderous tornadoes, and cataclysmic fires...

The world has ended before. Ice ages buried continents. Asteroids struck with force beyond imagination. Volcanic winters darkened skies for years. Life survived, adapted, continued. This time might be different. We are the first species capable of predicting our own extinction and potentially causing it. We can see the asteroid coming and we can build the weapon that does what the asteroid might do. This book examines eighteen pathways to extinction or near-extinction, not to frighten, but to illuminate. NUCLEAR WAR could darken the planet in less than an hour. The firestorms would inject ...

Updated throughout with recent developments and additional illustrations Reveals how solar outbursts caused the end of the last ice age, unleashed catastrophe upon ancient advanced civilizations, and led to six millennia of a Solar-Induced Dark Age Includes evidence from solar...

The rise to global predominance of Western civilization is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five hundred years. All over the world, an astonishing proportion of people now work for Western-style companies, study at Western-style universities, vote for Western-style governments, take Western medicines, wear Western clothes, and even work Western hours. Yet six hundred years ago the petty kingdoms of Western Europe seemed unlikely to achieve much more than perpetual internecine warfare. It was Ming China or Ottoman Turkey that had the look of world civilizations.

"Ancient Apocalypse: The Fall of the Bronze Age" unveils a transformative period in human history that reshaped the ancient world. This gripping account explores the enigmatic collapse of Bronze Age civilizations across the Mediterranean and Near East. The narrative meticulously unravels the complex factors behind this dramatic downfall. It examines how environmental changes, including climate shifts and natural disasters, crippled agricultural systems and economic stability. The book also delves into the disintegration of intricate trade networks that once united empires, triggering ...

For centuries, explorers, treasure hunters, and dreamers chased the legend of El Dorado — a golden city hidden in the heart of South America. But the truth was never a city. It was a people. In El Dorado: The Real Story, historian and storyteller Elena Caro reveals the untold history of the Muisca civilization of Colombia — the creators of the ritual that sparked the world’s greatest treasure hunt. Far from a vanished myth, the Muisca were a sophisticated confederation of sun-worshippers, salt traders, and farmers who built a golden world of reciprocity and balance. When the Spanish ...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon With a new afterword It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about...

An illuminating account of a lone wolf journeying across the Alps into Italy, and what the resurgence of wolves says about our connection to nature, immigration, and one another—from an award-winning journalist. “Lone Wolf is a deeply fascinating story, grippingly told.”—Robert...

Favereau takes us inside one of the most powerful sources of cross-border integration in world history. The Horde was the central node in the Eurasian commercial boom of the 13th and 14th centuries and was a conduit for exchanges across thousands of miles. Its unique political regime - a complex power-sharing arrangement among the khan and the nobility - rewarded skillful administrators and diplomats and fostered an economic order that was mobile, organized, and innovative.

The rise of human civilization and all of recorded history occurred in this warm period, known as the Holocene. Until very recently, we had no detailed record of climate changes during the Holocene. Now we do. In this engrossing and captivating look at the human effects of climate variability, Brian Fagan shows how climate functioned as what the historian Paul Kennedy described as one of the “deeper transformations” of history—a more important historical factor than we understand.

In Millennium, best-selling historian Ian Mortimer takes the listener on a whirlwind tour of the last 10 centuries of Western history. It is a journey into a past vividly brought to life and bursting with ideas, that pits one century against another in his quest to measure which century saw the greatest change. We journey from a time when there was a fair chance of your village being burned to the ground by invaders - and dried human dung was a recommended cure for cancer - to a world in which explorers sailed into the unknown and civilizations came into conflict.

The creator of the hit podcast Tides of History offers a new look at humanity’s deep past, showing us how our world was built not by inevitability, but by trial and error on a global scale. There’s a familiar story about us humans: we went from hunting and gathering to farming, wandering...

The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought, and the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093. Dramatizing science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, The Collapse of Western Civilization reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do, providing a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate-change literature.

Lost in Time: The Hidden Histories That Changed the World 🕰️ Uncover the untold stories that history forgot—but that changed the world forever. 🌍 Journey through lost civilizations, secret alliances, and hidden events that shaped our modern era. 🦸 Meet overlooked heroes and revolutionaries whose impact has been erased or ignored. 📜 Explore suppressed discoveries and shadowy decisions that altered the course of nations. 🔍 Reveals the gaps in mainstream history, offering a richer, more complete picture of the past. 📚 Perfect for history lovers, truth-seekers, and curious...

Published to coincide with Marathon's 2500th anniversary, a riveting history of the historic battle. The Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. is not only understood as the most decisive event in the struggle between the Greeks and the Persians, but can also be seen as perhaps the most significant moment in our collective history. 10,000 Athenian citizens faced a Persian military force of more than 25,000.