"Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style--thorough, yet riveting--famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old...

"Even on the most smog-bound of days, the rocky outcrop on which the Acropolis stands is visible above the sprawling roof-scape of the Greek capital. Athens presents one of the most recognizable and symbolically potent panoramas of any of the world's cities: the pillars and pediments of the Parthenon--the temple dedicated to Athena, goddess of wisdom, that crowns the Acropolis--dominate a city whose name is synonymous for many with civilization itself."--...

#1 New York Times Bestseller • New York Times Readers' Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21st Century • The Summer Reading Pick for President Barack Obama and Bill Gates

Official U.S. edition with full color illustrations throughout.

From renowned historian Yuval Noah Harari comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity's creation and evolution—a

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Art historian Sir Kenneth Clark presents an epic examination of Western European culture, defining what he considers to be the crucial phases of its development. This lavish series was hailed as a masterpiece when it was broadcast in 1969.

The origins of Chinese ideographs were not known until 1899, when a scholar went to an apothecary for some medicine made of 'dragon bone." To his surprise, the bone, which had not yet been ground into powder, contained a number of carved inscriptions. Thus began the exploration of the 3000-year-old sources of the written characters still used in China today. In this unparalleled and deeply researched book, Cecilia Lindqvist tells the story of these...

Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics, contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. This book is not just about Scotland: it is an exciting...

"If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?" - CANDIDE Candide is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. It is the absurdly melodramatic story of a young man, Candide, living a sheltered life who clings desperately to "the best of all possible worlds," one which is abruptly interrupted by a series of painfully disillusioning events that set him off on a wide-ranging journey....

"A deep history of Africa, from 70,000 BCE to 300 CE, that synthesizes the archaeological and historical linguistic evidence to tell an integrated global history of the continent. A framing chapter introduces the historical goals and issues of the book, recounting the terrible histories of recent centuries that led to Africa being wrongly treated as a peripheral other in the history of us all. Chapter two, "African Firsts in the History Technology,"...