Download or read book The Light Ages The Surprising Story of Medieval Science written by Seb Falk and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of 2020 by The Telegraph, The Times, and BBC History Magazine An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk. "Falk’s bubbling curiosity and strong sense of storytelling always swept me along. By the end, The Light Ages didn’t just broaden my conception of science; even as I scrolled away on my Kindle, it felt like I was sitting alongside Westwyk at St. Albans abbey, leafing through dusty manuscripts by candlelight." —Alex Orlando, Discover Soaring Gothic cathedrals, violent crusades, the Black Death: these are the dramatic forces that shaped the medieval era. But the so-called Dark Ages also gave us the first universities, eyeglasses, and mechanical clocks. As medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky, they came to develop a vibrant scientific culture. In The Light Ages, Cambridge science historian Seb Falk takes us on a tour of medieval science through the eyes of one fourteenth-century monk, John of Westwyk. Born in a rural manor, educated in England’s grandest monastery, and then exiled to a clifftop priory, Westwyk was an intrepid crusader, inventor, and astrologer. From multiplying Roman numerals to navigating by the stars, curing disease, and telling time with an ancient astrolabe, we learn emerging science alongside Westwyk and travel with him through the length and breadth of England and beyond its shores. On our way, we encounter a remarkable cast of characters: the clock-building English abbot with leprosy, the French craftsman-turned-spy, and the Persian polymath who founded the world’s most advanced observatory. The Light Ages offers a gripping story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man in a precarious world and conjures a vivid picture of medieval life as we have never seen it before. An enlightening history that argues that these times weren’t so dark after all, The Light Ages shows how medieval ideas continue to color how we see the world today.
Download or read book New Light on a Dark Age written by Susan Helen Langdon and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays, by some of the most prominent scholars in the field, reflect a diversity of approaches to studying the development of the early Iron Age. They cover four major topics: evidence for the rise of the polis, sources and uses of artistic form and iconography, developments in cults around Greece, and issues of poetry and narrative. Linking these topics are the themes of social change; mortuary practices; growth and use of sacred places; social, literary, and artistic applications of style; and Greece and the outside world. Focusing specifically on developments within Greece and incorporating critical new assessments of archaeological, artistic, and literary evidence, New Light on a Dark Age makes an important contribution to the rapidly changing study of the Dark Age in Greece.
Download or read book The Lowland Maya Postclassic written by Arlen F. Chase and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 1985-03-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection represents a major step forward in understanding the era from the end of Classic Maya civilization to the Spanish conquest.
Download or read book Dark Age written by Pierce Brown and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 849 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ***The explosive fifth novel in the Red Rising Series*** The Number One New York Times bestselling author of Morning Star returns to the Red Rising universe with the thrilling sequel to Iron Gold. He broke the chains Then broke the world.... A decade ago Darrow led a revolution, and laid the foundations for a new world. Now he's an outlaw. Cast out of the very Republic he founded, with half his fleet destroyed, he wages a rogue war on Mercury. Outnumbered, outgunned but not out thought. Is he still the hero who broke the chains? Or will he become the agent of the world's destruction? Is it time for another legend to take his place? Lysander au Lune, the displaced heir to the old empire, has returned to the Core. First he must survive Gold backstabbing, then Darrow. Will he bring peace to mankind at the edge of his sword? And on Luna, Mustang, the embattled sovereign of the Republic, must save both democracy and her exiled husband millions of kilometres away. The only thing certain in the Solar System is treachery. And that the Rising is entering a new Dark Age. PRAISE FOR THE RED RISING SERIES: 'Pierce Brown's empire-crushing debut is a sprawling vision . . . Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow' - Scott Sigler, New York Times bestselling author of Pandemic '[A] top-notch debut novel . . . Red Rising ascends above a crowded dystopian field' - USA Today '[A] spectacular adventure . . . one heart-pounding ride . . . Pierce Brown's dizzyingly good debut novel evokes The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, and Ender's Game. . . . [Red Rising] has everything it needs to become meteoric' - Entertainment Weekly
Download or read book New Dark Age written by James Bridle and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “New Dark Age is among the most unsettling and illuminating books I’ve read about the Internet, which is to say that it is among the most unsettling and illuminating books I’ve read about contemporary life.” – New Yorker As the world around us increases in technological complexity, our understanding of it diminishes. Underlying this trend is a single idea: the belief that our existence is understandable through computation, and more data is enough to help us build a better world. In reality, we are lost in a sea of information, increasingly divided by fundamentalism, simplistic narratives, conspiracy theories, and post-factual politics. Meanwhile, those in power use our lack of understanding to further their own interests. Despite the apparent accessibility of information, we’re living in a new Dark Age. From rogue financial systems to shopping algorithms, from artificial intelligence to state secrecy, we no longer understand how our world is governed or presented to us. The media is filled with unverifiable speculation, much of it generated by anonymous software, while companies dominate their employees through surveillance and the threat of automation. In his brilliant new work, leading artist and writer James Bridle surveys the history of art, technology, and information systems, and reveals the dark clouds that gather over our dreams of the digital sublime.
Download or read book The Light Ages written by Seb Falk and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-10 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dark Age Ahead written by Jane Jacobs and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this indispensable book, urban visionary Jane Jacobs argues that as agrarianism gives way to a technology-based future, we’re at risk of cultural collapse. Jacobs—renowned author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Cities—pinpoints five pillars of our culture that are in serious decay: community and family; higher education; the effective practice of science; taxation, and government; and the self-regulation of the learned professions. The corrosion of these pillars, Jacobs argues, is linked to societal ills such as environmental crisis, racism, and the growing gulf between rich and poor. But this is a hopeful book as well as a warning. Drawing on a vast frame of reference—from fifteenth-century Chinese shipbuilding to Ireland’s cultural rebirth—Jacobs suggests how the cycles of decay can be arrested and our way of life renewed. Invigorating and accessible, Dark Age Ahead is not only the crowning achievement of Jane Jacobs’ career, but one of the most important works of our time.
Download or read book The Bright Ages written by Matthew Gabriele and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The beauty and levity that Perry and Gabriele have captured in this book are what I think will help it to become a standard text for general audiences for years to come….The Bright Ages is a rare thing—a nuanced historical work that almost anyone can enjoy reading.”—Slate "Incandescent and ultimately intoxicating." —The Boston Globe A lively and magisterial popular history that refutes common misperceptions of the European Middle Ages, showing the beauty and communion that flourished alongside the dark brutality—a brilliant reflection of humanity itself. The word “medieval” conjures images of the “Dark Ages”—centuries of ignorance, superstition, stasis, savagery, and poor hygiene. But the myth of darkness obscures the truth; this was a remarkable period in human history. The Bright Ages recasts the European Middle Ages for what it was, capturing this 1,000-year era in all its complexity and fundamental humanity, bringing to light both its beauty and its horrors. The Bright Ages takes us through ten centuries and crisscrosses Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia and Africa, revisiting familiar people and events with new light cast upon them. We look with fresh eyes on the Fall of Rome, Charlemagne, the Vikings, the Crusades, and the Black Death, but also to the multi-religious experience of Iberia, the rise of Byzantium, and the genius of Hildegard and the power of queens. We begin under a blanket of golden stars constructed by an empress with Germanic, Roman, Spanish, Byzantine, and Christian bloodlines and end nearly 1,000 years later with the poet Dante—inspired by that same twinkling celestial canopy—writing an epic saga of heaven and hell that endures as a masterpiece of literature today. The Bright Ages reminds us just how permeable our manmade borders have always been and of what possible worlds the past has always made available to us. The Middle Ages may have been a world “lit only by fire” but it was one whose torches illuminated the magnificent rose windows of cathedrals, even as they stoked the pyres of accused heretics. The Bright Ages contains an 8-page color insert.
Download or read book Iron Gold written by Pierce Brown and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In the epic next chapter of the Red Rising Saga, the #1 bestselling author of Morning Star pushes the boundaries of one of the boldest series in fiction. “Mature science fiction existing within the frame of blazing space opera . . . done in a style [that] borders on Shakespearean.”—NPR (One of the Best Books of the Year) They call him father, liberator, warlord, Slave King, Reaper. But he feels a boy as he falls toward the war-torn planet, his armor red, his army vast, his heart heavy. It is the tenth year of war and the thirty-third of his life. A decade ago Darrow was the hero of the revolution he believed would break the chains of the Society. But the Rising has shattered everything: Instead of peace and freedom, it has brought endless war. Now he must risk all he has fought for on one last desperate mission. Darrow still believes he can save everyone, but can he save himself? And throughout the worlds, other destinies entwine with Darrow’s to change his fate forever: A young Red girl flees tragedy in her refugee camp, and achieves for herself a new life she could never have imagined. An ex-soldier broken by grief is forced to steal the most valuable thing in the galaxy—or pay with his life. And Lysander au Lune, the heir in exile to the Sovereign, wanders the stars with his mentor, Cassius, haunted by the loss of the world that Darrow transformed, and dreaming of what will rise from its ashes. Red Rising was the story of the end of one universe. Iron Gold is the story of the creation of a new one. Witness the beginning of a stunning new saga of tragedy and triumph from masterly New York Times bestselling author Pierce Brown. Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER
Download or read book From Boys to Men written by Ruth Mazo Karras and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the social identity of women in medieval society hinged largely on the ritual of marriage, identity for men was derived from belonging to a particular group. Knights, monks, apprentices, guildsmen all underwent a process of initiation into their unique subcultures. As From Boys to Men shows, the process of this socialization reveals a great deal about medieval ideas of what it meant to be a man—as distinguished from a boy, from a woman, and even from a beast. In an exploration of the creation of adult masculine identities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, From Boys to Men takes a close look at the roles of men through the lens of three distinct institutions: the university, the aristocratic household and court, and the craft workshop. Ruth Mazo Karras demonstrates that, while men in the later Middle Ages were defined as the opposite of women, this was never the only factor in determining their role in society. A knight proved himself against other men by the successful use of violence as well as by successful control of women. University scholars proved themselves against each other through a violence that was metaphorical and against other men by their Latinity and their use of the tools of logic and rationality. Craft workers proved their manhood by achieving independent householder status. Drawing on sources throughout Northern Europe, including court records and other administrative documents, prescriptive texts such as instructions for dubbing to knighthood, biographies, and imaginative literature, From Boys to Men sheds new light on how young men were trained to take their place in medieval society and the implications of that training for the construction of gender in the Middle Ages. Rescuing maleness from its classification as an ungendered category, From Boys to Men unravels what it meant to be men in a womanless context, revealing the common threads that emerge from the study of young manhood in various disparate institutional settings.
Download or read book Red Rising written by Pierce Brown and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pierce Brown’s relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. “Red Rising ascends above a crowded dystopian field.”—USA Today ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness “I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.” “I live for you,” I say sadly. Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.” Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he toils willingly, trusting that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children. But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class. Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so. Praise for Red Rising “[A] spectacular adventure . . . one heart-pounding ride . . . Pierce Brown’s dizzyingly good debut novel evokes The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, and Ender’s Game. . . . [Red Rising] has everything it needs to become meteoric.”—Entertainment Weekly “Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow.”—Scott Sigler “Red Rising is a sophisticated vision. . . . Brown will find a devoted audience.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER
Download or read book The Darkening Age written by Catherine Nixey and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Jerwood Award from the Royal Society of Literature, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and named a Book of the Year by the Telegraph, Spectator, Observer, and BBC History Magazine, this bold new history of the rise of Christianity shows how its radical followers helped to annihilate Greek and Roman civilizations. The Darkening Age is the largely unknown story of how a militant religion deliberately attacked and suppressed the teachings of the Classical world, ushering in centuries of unquestioning adherence to "one true faith." Despite the long-held notion that the early Christians were meek and mild, going to their martyrs' deaths singing hymns of love and praise, the truth, as Catherine Nixey reveals, is very different. Far from being meek and mild, they were violent, ruthless, and fundamentally intolerant. Unlike the polytheistic world, in which the addition of one new religion made no fundamental difference to the old ones, this new ideology stated not only that it was the way, the truth, and the light but that, by extension, every single other way was wrong and had to be destroyed. From the first century to the sixth, those who didn't fall into step with its beliefs were pursued in every possible way: social, legal, financial, and physical. Their altars were upturned and their temples demolished, their statues hacked to pieces, and their priests killed. It was an annihilation. Authoritative, vividly written, and utterly compelling, this is a remarkable debut from a brilliant young historian.
Download or read book Light Bringer written by Pierce Brown and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2023-07-25 with total page 824 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Darrow returns as Pierce Brown’s New York Times bestselling Red Rising series continues in the thrilling sequel to Dark Age. The Reaper is a legend, more myth than man: the savior of worlds, the leader of the Rising, the breaker of chains. But the Reaper is also Darrow, born of the red soil of Mars: a husband, a father, a friend. Marooned far from home after a devastating defeat on the battlefields of Mercury, Darrow longs to return to his wife and sovereign, Virginia, to defend Mars from its bloodthirsty would-be conqueror Lysander. Lysander longs to destroy the Rising and restore the supremacy of Gold, and will raze the worlds to realize his ambitions. The worlds once needed the Reaper. But now they need Darrow, and Darrow needs the people he loves—Virginia, Cassius, Sevro—in order to defend the Republic. So begins Darrow’s long voyage home, an interplanetary adventure where old friends will reunite, new alliances will be forged, and rivals will clash on the battlefield. Because Eo’s dream is still alive—and after the dark age will come a new age: of light, of victory, of hope. Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER
Download or read book The Growth of the Medieval City written by David M Nicholas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-17 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first part of David Nicholas's massive two-volume study of the medieval city, this book is a major achievement in its own right. (It is also fully self-sufficient, though many readers will want to use it with its equally impressive sequel which is being published simultaneously.) In it, Professor Nicholas traces the slow regeneration of urban life in the early medieval period, showing where and how an urban tradition had survived from late antiquity, and when and why new urban communities began to form where there was no such continuity. He charts the different types and functions of the medieval city, its interdependence with the surrounding countryside, and its often fraught relations with secular authority. The book ends with the critical changes of the late thirteenth century that established an urban network that was strong enough to survive the plagues, famines and wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Download or read book Dark Age Naval Power written by John Haywood and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely praised and accepted, this revised and updated second edition includes new evidence lending weight to Haywood's argument that early Germanic shipbuilding and seafaring skills were far more advanced that previously thought. The study begins in 12BC with an unsuccessful attack by a fleet of the Bructeri on a Roman fleet and ends with the collapse of the Carolingian coastal defence system. Haywood attepmts to reconstruct the historical context from literary and a wide range of archaeological evidence, as well as analysing strategy and tactics of naval activities. Useful glossary of technical terms.
Download or read book A World Lit Only by Fire written by William Manchester and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2009-09-26 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "lively and engaging" history of the Middle Ages (Dallas Morning News) from the acclaimed historian William Manchester, author of The Last Lion. From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose, and with the grace and authority of his extraordinary gift for narrative history, William Manchester leads us from a civilization tottering on the brink of collapse to the grandeur of its rebirth: the dense explosion of energy that spawned some of history's greatest poets, philosophers, painters, adventurers, and reformers, as well as some of its most spectacular villains. "Manchester provides easy access to a fascinating age when our modern mentality was just being born." --Chicago Tribune
Download or read book The Dark Age of Greece written by A.M. Snodgrass and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a classic work of archaeology by one of the premier figures in the field. First published in 1971, A.M. Snodgrass'The Dark Age if Greece is the most comprehensive and coherent account available of this period of ancient Greece.
