Download or read book Style and Civilizations written by Alfred Louis Kroeber and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1963 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Civilizations written by Felipe Fernández-Armesto and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-09-14 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 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 cultures. In a grand tradition that is certain to evoke comparisons to the great historical taxonomies, each chapter of Civilizations connects the world of the ecologist and geographer to a panorama of cultural history. In Civilizations, the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is not merely a Christian allegory, but a testament to the thousand-year-long deforestation of the trees that once covered 90 percent of the European mainland. The Indian Ocean has served as the world's greatest trading highway for millennia not merely because of cultural imperatives, but because the regular monsoon winds blow one way in the summer and the other in the winter. In the words of the author, "Unlike previous attempts to write the comparative history of civilizations, it is arranged environment by environment, rather than period by period, or society by society." Thus, seventeen distinct habitats serve as jumping-off points for a series of brilliant set-piece comparisons; thus, tundra civilizations from Ice Age Europe are linked with the Inuit of the Pacific Northwest; and the Mississippi mound-builders and the deforesters of eleventh-century Europe are both understood as civilizations built on woodlands. Here, of course, are the familiar riverine civilizations of Mesopotamia and China, of the Indus and the Nile; but also highland civilizations from the Inca to New Guinea; island cultures from Minoan Crete to Polynesia to Renaissance Venice; maritime civilizations of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea...even the Bushmen of Southern Africa are seen through a lens provided by the desert civilizations of Chaco Canyon. More, here are fascinating stories, brilliantly told -- of the voyages of Chinese admiral Chen Ho and Portuguese commodore Vasco da Gama, of the Great Khan and the Great Zimbabwe. Here are Hesiod's tract on maritime trade in the early Aegean and the most up-to-date genetics of seed crops. Erudite, wide-ranging, a work of dazzling scholarship written with extraordinary flair, Civilizations is a remarkable achievement...a tour de force by a brilliant scholar.
Download or read book Understanding Early Civilizations written by Bruce G. Trigger and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-05-05 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sample Text
Download or read book Style and Civilization written by Alfred Louis Kroeber and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Rhythms of History written by Stephen Blaha and published by Pingree-Hill Publishing. This book was released on 2002-08 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Rhythms of History" presents a quantitative theory of civilizations supported by the data in Toynbee's classic 12-volume "A Study of History."
Download or read book Dirt written by David R. Montgomery and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-05-14 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.
Download or read book The Nature of Civilizations written by Matthew Melko and published by Porter Sargent Publishers. This book was released on 1969 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Civilization and Its Contents written by Bruce Mazlish and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Civilization" is a constantly invoked term. It is used by both politicians and scholars. How useful, in fact, is this term? Civilization and Its Contents traces the origins of the concept in the eighteenth century. It shows its use as a colonial ideology, and then as a support for racism. The term was extended to a dead society, Egyptian civilization, and was appropriated by Japan, China, and Islamic countries. This latter development lays the groundwork for the contemporary call for a "dialogue of civilizations." The author proposes instead that today the use of the term "civilization" has a global meaning, with local variants recognized as cultures. It may be more appropriate, however, to abandon the name "civilization" and to focus on a new understanding of the civilizing process.
Download or read book What Makes Civilization written by D. Wengrow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid new account of the 'birth of civilization' in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia where many of the foundations of modern life were laid
Download or read book New Worlds New Civilizations written by Michael Jan Friedman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-08-28 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They said it couldn't be done ... all the myriad worlds which have been sought out and explored through more than 500 television episodes and nine Star Trek movies, mapped, illustrated and brought to life in the pages of a comprehensive Star Trek atlas. From the comparatively crowded space of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, home to Earth and Vulcan, Bajor and Betazed, the Cardassian Union and the Romulan and Klingon Empires; to the distant Gamma Quadrant controlled by the Dominion; to the far reaches of the Delta Quadrant, home space of the Borg, where of Federation explorers only the crew of the USS Voyager has ever been; NEW WORLDS, NEW CIVILIZATIONS catalogues peoples and planets from all four corners of the galaxy. Ever wondered where the blue-skinned Bolians originated from? Or what it is like on the permanently frozen homeworld of the bloodless Breen? From the first world that the first away team landed on under the command of Christopher Pike in the original pilot episode 'The Cage' (a world that has been off-limits to the Federation ever since), to the world of the Ba'ku as seen in 'Star Trek: Insurrection', all these and many more are described and depicted in all their fascinating detail by a team of star-studded contributors. Produced in the finest tradition of bestselling Star Trek illustrated reference from Pocket Books such as The Art of Star Trek and Where No Man Has Gone Before, NEW WORLDS, NEW CIVILIZATIONS will be an essential addition to every Trekker's shelves.
Download or read book Our Oriental Heritage written by Will Durant and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 1076 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume of the expansive Pulitzer Prize-winning series The Story of Civilization. Discover a history of civilization in Egypt and the Near East to the Death of Alexander, and in India, China, and Japan from the beginning; with an introduction on the nature and foundations of civilization.
Download or read book Rights and Civilizations written by Gustavo Gozzi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-14 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illustrates the origin and ways of Western hegemony over other civilizations across the world.
Download or read book Civilization written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.
Download or read book LIFE the World s Great Civilizations written by Editors of Life and published by Life. This book was released on 2012-08-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the pictorial history of the rise (and fall) of great nations, from the ancients to today. But this is not just Rome and the Incas and British imperialism-though it certainly includes them-but lesser known civilizations that are often relegated to a footnote, or forgotten altogether. The ancient Anasazi Indians of the American Southwest apparently enjoyed an agrarian lifestyle that, after they mysteriously disappeared, would not be realized again on this continent for many generations. The natives of Easter Island sealed their own doom with a kind of communal hysteria that remains unclear. Several cultures put their mark on England's Stonehenge, and peeling the layers of that story is like parsing the experience of a very old tree, ring by ring. Of course the ages of empire are recounted: Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, Russia, Great Britain. We journey, photographically and archeologically, through Troy, and also the Mediterranean islands of Gnossos and Santorini (was this where Plato's Atlantis thrived before the cataclysm)? We climb to Machu Piccu, and trek to Australia to revisit the island continent when it belonged to its Aborigines. Obviously, many of the great civilizations belong to history, experiencing their glory before the advent of photography. There are no pictures of Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan or Napoleon beyond the painted ones. But there are many photographs of the civilizations they built and ruled, many of which were made for LIFE magazine, which looked at this story often. Near our book's end, we arrive at the ongoing narrative that is the United States of America: today's great civilization, built on a system called democracy. Our history and prospects are all the more fascinating when put in relief against the stories of all previous great civilizations.
Download or read book A History of Civilizations written by Fernand Braudel and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1995-04-01 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written from a consciously anti-enthnocentric approach, this fascinating work is a survey of the civilizations of the modern world in terms of the broad sweep and continuities of history, rather than the "event-based" technique of most other texts.
Download or read book Reciprocity and Redistribution in Andean Civilizations written by John V. Murra and published by Hau. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John V. Murra's Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures, originally given in 1969, are the only major study of the Andean "avenue towards civilization." Collected and published for the first time here, they offer a powerful and insistent perspective on the Andean region as one of the few places in which a so-called "pristine civilization" developed. Murra sheds light not only on the way civilization was achieved here--which followed a fundamentally different process than that of Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica--he uses that study to shed new light on the general problems of achieving civilization in any world region. Murra intermixes a study of Andean ecology with an exploration of the ideal of economic self-sufficiency, stressing two foundational socioeconomic forces: reciprocity and redistribution. He shows how both enabled Andean communities to realize direct control of a maximum number of vertically ordered ecological floors and the resources they offered. He famously called this arrangement a "vertical archipelago," a revolutionary model that is still examined and debated almost fifty years after it was first presented in these lecture. Written in a crisp and elegant style and inspired by decades of ethnographic fieldwork, this set of lectures is nothing less than a lost classic, and it will be sure to inspire new generations of anthropologists and historians working in South America and beyond.
Download or read book Power Style written by Dominique Gaulme and published by Flammarion-Pere Castor. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This exploration of regalia throughout the world and the ages, and the powerful figures who exemplify each style -- from the ceremonial robes of Chinese emperors to the wigs and stockings of seventeenth-century couriers to the casual college-inspired blazers and sunglasses of American politicians such as JFK -- provides a fascinating and comprehensive view of the sociological aspects of clothing. If there is truth in the saying 'tell me what you were and I'll tell you who you are,' then it is also true to add, 'I'll tell you what kind of society you live in." -- Dust jacket.
