Changed Civilization

Food is never just food. Every bite carries history. Before the potato reached Europe, millions starved on failing grain harvests. Before coffee, there were no coffeehouses — and no Enlightenment debates that changed the course of ideas. Before sugar, there were no Caribbean empires, no transatlantic slave trade, no sweetness without suffering. 50 Foods That Changed the World takes you on a journey across every continent and every era of human civilization — from the wheat fields of ancient Mesopotamia to the sushi restaurants of modern Tokyo. Each of the fifty foods in these pages ...

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...

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.

Discover a thought-provoking exploration of Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis through a unique biblical perspective. This book examines the historical, cultural, and religious foundations of civilizations, analyzing their interactions and conflicts in a multipolar world. From the rise of ancient civilizations like China, India, and Russia to the decline of Western dominance, it offers a compelling critique of modernity and its impact on global politics. Dive into the intersections of faith, history, and civilization, uncovering truths about Christian postmodernism, ...

“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...

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...

A captivating journey through humanity’s relentless quest to harness and control physical power, fueling groundbreaking innovations while leaving a profound impact on our planet—from the acclaimed author of The Age of Wood. The Powerful Primate presents a compelling argument that flips the...

Discover a thought-provoking exploration of the collapse of Modernist political ideologies through a biblical lens. This book examines the decline of the dominant political systems of the past two centuries — Liberalism, Communism, and Fascism — and the spiritual and cultural crisis they have left in their wake. As the modern world order falters, Jay Rogers offers a bold reinterpretation of Aleksandr Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory by grounding a vision for the multipolar world in the enduring truths of the Bible. Blending geopolitical theory with Christian theology, this work ...

50 Discoveries That Changed the World is a captivating journey through the ideas, inventions, and breakthroughs that have shaped human history and our understanding of the universe. From the mastery of fire and the invention of the wheel, to the mapping of time, the unraveling of DNA, and the revolutionary power of CRISPR gene editing, this book explores 50 pivotal moments that redefined life, science, and society. Each chapter delves into a single discovery, explaining not only what was uncovered, but why it mattered—how these breakthroughs transformed the way we live, think, and ...

Every spice in your kitchen has a secret. Most of them involve war. Black pepper paid the ransom for a Roman city. Nutmeg drove a company to genocide. Vanilla was locked inside a single country for three centuries until a twelve-year-old enslaved boy discovered how to set it free. Saffron was guarded so jealously that adulterating it was punishable by death. 50 Spices That Shaped History takes you inside the stories behind civilization's most coveted flavors — from the ancient trade routes that made fortunes and broke empires, to the kitchens where the world's cuisines were transformed by...

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 history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives todayand our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the silent elephant in the room.

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.

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...

In St. Helena: The Most Influential Woman in Human History, former judge, prosecutor, and investigator Steve Castlen presents a riveting blend of historical fact and imaginative storytelling to make the case for one astonishing truth: that the mother of Constantine the Great was the single most transformative woman in the history of the Western world.

Brought to you by Penguin. A radical retelling of human history through collapse – from the dawn of our species to the urgent existential threats of the twenty-first century and beyond. ‘A brilliant, utterly convincing account of the evolution of human society and why we are probably...

K. Eric Drexler is the founding father of nanotechnology - the science of engineering on a molecular level. In Radical Abundance, he shows how rapid scientific progress is about to change our world. Thanks to atomically precise manufacturing, we will soon have the power to produce radically more of what people want, and at a lower cost. The result will shake the very foundations of our economy and environment.

#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...

A finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world--sand--and the crucial role it plays in our lives. After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--even more than...

What really built civilization? Not just kings, generals, and inventors—but a beaver that redrew the map of North America, a flea that ended the Middle Ages, a fish that funded the American Revolution, and a worm that Charles Darwin spent forty years obsessing over. 50 Animals That Changed the World uncovers the surprising, forgotten, and often shocking ways that animals—not humans—determined the outcomes of history's most pivotal moments. Across fifty fast-moving chapters, you'll discover: How the mosquito killed more soldiers than any general in history, deciding wars from ancient ...