Helen Plum Library

"A captivating exploration of how "Western Civilization"--the concept of a single cultural inheritance extending from ancient Greece to modern times--is a powerful figment of our collective imagination"--

"History is a rich, varied, and fascinating subject, so it's rare to find the whole lot in one book . . . until now. The History of the World in Bite-Sized Chunks pulls it all together, from the world's earliest civilizations in 3500 BC to the founding of the United Nations in 1945, passing by the likes of Charlemagne, the Ottoman Empire, and the Crimean War, to name a few. Here's your chance to introduce yourself to the full spectrum of world history,...

"This entertaining and enlightening graphic narrative tells the exciting story of the seventeenth-century thinkers who challenged authority--sometimes risking excommunication, prison, and even death--to lay the foundations of modern philosophy and science and help usher in a new world...Heretics! tells the story of their ideas, lives, and times in a vivid new way. Crisscrossing Europe as it follows them in their travels and exiles, the narrative describes...

From Finland to Newfoundland and Jelling to Jerusalem, follow in the wake of the Vikings -- a transformative story of a people that begins with paganism and ends in Christendom. Focusing on key events, including the sack of Lindisfarne in 793 and the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, medieval history expert John Haywood recounts the saga of the Viking Age, from the creation of the world through to the dwindling years of halfhearted raids and elegiac...

History is made not only by kings, queens, presidents, and generals, but equally by inventors and the technological powers they unleash. This course explores the inventions that have changed the world from prehistoric times to the 21st century. Along with recounting famous inventions such as the steam engine, airplane, atomic bomb and computer chip, these lectures explore a number of surprising innovations, including beer, pagodas, indoor plumbing...

"Here is a fresh, provocative look at how a recognizable Europe came into being in the first millennium AD. With sharp analytic insight, Peter Heather explores the dynamics of migration and social and economic interaction that changed two vastly different worlds--the undeveloped barbarian world and the sophisticated Roman Empire--into remarkably similar societies and states. The book's vivid narrative begins at the time of Christ, when the Mediterranean...

"Explores the eventful intertwining of outward event and inner intellectual life to tell, in all its richness and depth, the story of the 17th century in Europe. It was a time of creativity unparalleled in history before or since, from science to the arts, from philosophy to politics ... Grayling points to three primary factors [behind this epochal shift]: the rise of vernacular (popular) languages in philosophy, theology, science, and literature;...