The Leading eBooks Store Online
for your Apple or Android device, Nook, Kobo, PC, Mac, Sony Reader...
Most popular at the top
Collapseby Jared Diamond
Penguin Group Inc. 2011; US$ 14.99In 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 caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? As in Guns, Germs, and Steel , Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland, Diamond traces... more...
Next 100 Years, Theby George Friedman
Allison & Busby 2010; US$ 8.34The New York Times Bestseller If you think you know where the world is headed, think again Mexico making a bid for global supremacy? Poland becoming America?s closest ally? World War III taking place in space? It might sound fantastic but all these things can happen. In The Next 100 Years , George Friedman, author of the huge bestseller America?s Secret War offers a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the 21st century. He predicts where and why future wars will erupt, and how they will be fought; which nations will gain and lose economic and political power; and how new technologies and cultural trends will alter the way we live in the new century. more...
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Global Medieval Life and Cultureby Joyce Salisbury; Nancy Sullivan
ABC-CLIO 2008; US$ 350.00The period we know as the Middle Ages, roughly the years 400-1400, saw the formation of ideas and institutions that mark modern societies. Developments as disparate as the foundation of Islam and the emergence of the middle class occurred during this pivotal millennium. Although historical study of the Middle Ages has traditionally focused on Western Europe, modern historians recognize the complex global nature of this era. For all major world regions, this three-volume work offers in-depth essays on broad themes, short entries on specific topics, and carefully selected primary documents to help readers more fully understand this critically important period.||Edited by Joyce Salisbury, who is general editor of the award-winning Greenwood Encyclopedia... more...
Civilizationby Niall Ferguson
Penguin Group US 2011; US$ 16.99From one of our most renowned historians, Civilization is the definitive history of Western civilization's rise to global dominance-and the killer applications" that made this improbable ascent possible. 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... more...
Transnational Connectionsby Ulf Hannerz
Routledge 1996; US$ 33.95A lucid account of culture in an age of globalization. The author engages with theoretical debates about culture and globalization and raises issues of how we think and live today. more...
Civilizationsby Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Simon & Schuster 2001; US$ 13.99In Civilizations, Felipe Fernández-Armesto once again proves himself a brilliantly original historian, capable of large-minded and comprehensive works; here he redefines the subject that has fascinated historians from Thucydides to Gibbon to Spengler to Fernand Braudel: the nature of civilization. To Fernández-Armesto, a civilization is "civilized in direct proportion to its distance, its difference from the unmodified natural environment"...by its taming and warping of climate, geography, and ecology. The same impersonal forces that put an ocean between Africa and India, a river delta in Mesopotamia, or a 2,000-mile-long mountain range in South America have created the mold from which humanity has fashioned its own wildly differing... more...
Medieval Futuresby J. A. Burrow; Ian P. Wei
Boydell & Brewer 2000; US$ 56.25Medieval Futures explores the rich variety of ways in which medieval people imagined the future, from the prophetic anticipation of the end of the world to the mundane expectation that the world would continue indefinitely, permitting ordinary human plans and provisions. The articles explore the ways in which the future was represented to serve the present, methods used to predict the future, and strategies adopted in order to plan and provide for it. more...
Civilization and Its Enemiesby Lee Harris
Simon & Schuster 2004; US$ 17.99Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe....They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish....They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the enemy. "That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn't done enough for yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part --... more...
Dynamic Societyby Graeme Donald Snooks
Routledge 1996; US$ 160.00This thought-provoking and controversial work examines the nature and process of change in human society over the past two million years and concludes with probable future developments. more...
New Thinking for a New Millenniumby Richard A. Slaughter
Routledge 1996; US$ 64.95The study of futures is an area of increasing interest and one that is comprehensively examined in this new collection, with contributions from key names in the field. more...