Download or read book Figuring Out the Past written by Peter Turchin and published by The Economist. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the world records that define our history and jump headfirst into the past using scientific data that reveals accurate and insightful answers to life’s biggest questions. What was history's biggest empire? Or the tallest building of the ancient world? What was the plumbing like in medieval Byzantium? The average wage in the Mughal Empire? Where did scientific writing first emerge? What was the bloodiest ever ritual human sacrifice? We are used to thinking about history in terms of stories. Yet we understand our own world through data: cast arrays of statistics that reveal the workings of our societies. In Figuring Out the Past, radical historians Peter Turchin and Dan Hoyer dive into the numbers that reveal the true shape of the past, drawing on their own Seshat project, a staggeringly ambitious attempt to log every data point that can be gathered for every society that has ever existed. This book does more than tell the story of humanity: it shows you the big picture, by the numbers.
Download or read book The World of My Past written by Abraham Biderman and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is one of the most remarkable Holocaust memoirs ever written. It is the story of a young man who endured the full brunt of Nazi horror. He lived to tell the tale not only of the Lodz ghetto and Auschwitz-Birkenau (where his parents persished in the gas chambers) but of a further three concentration camps - Althammer, Dora and Bergen-Belsen. He survived all of it, but his brother was murdered, as were six million of his people.Abraham Biderman has written his book to keep a promise to his mother. 'Remember, remember what they did to us!' were her last words to him. In turn, he hopes that The World of My Past will serve as a legacy for future generations to learn about and remember what happened to humanity in the middle of the twentieth century. The World of My Past is a riveting personal testimony and a searing indictment of those who perpetrated and acquiesced in some of the most hideous events in human history.COMMENTS ON THE WORLD OF MY PAST'Unbearably moving ... a powerful, touching and truthful account.'Barry Jones'Powerful and profoundly disturbing ... As do the accounts of such writers as Primo Levi, Elie Weisel and Samuel Pisar, so too The World of My Past overwhelms me with the tragedy and horror of it all.'Sir Zelman Cowen'A vivid, haunting testimony ... His eloquence, dignity and clarity shine through the torment of a journey that no-one must make again.'Ramona Koval'A work of immense power ... in all my reading, I know of few works that better bring that time to life.'Phillip AdamsEXTRACT FROM THE WORLD OF MY PASTStaring at my mother, I thought that the years of suffering has not completely eroded the beauty of her face. For the most part, however, my mind was in turmoil. I was in panic and fear. I could not believe - nor could I disbelieve - that within a few hours none of us would be amongst the living. What goes on in this world? Why must we die? My father stood near me, silent, with an empty expression on his face, staring aimlessly into space through the little window crossed with barbed wire. He looked tired. His face bore the marks of starvation and pain. The Polish peasants were out in the fields, and they greeted the train with festive smiles. It almost seemed as though they knew we were coming, as though they were expecting us. They had certainly seen trains like this before. Some of them made hostile, offensive gestures at us. Their children were hopping about and clapping their hands with joy. To this day I wonder how they could. They knew who we were and where the Germans were taking us. They knew what would happen once we reached our destination. What sort of people could enjoy the sight of such a train? What sort of people enjoy the sight of a funeral? ...The trip was long and arduous as the death train, with a repetitious clatter of its wheels, sped into the dark, rhythmically seeming to warn us of our impending fate. After countless hours travelling in the never-ending night, we passed a little railway station, unattended and scarcely lit. It looked unreal. A lonely kiosk with chocolate boxes on display looked like theatre props on a stage. A sign appeared in big black letters on a white oblong board with a black border: Auschwitz... ...There was a sudden squealing of metal against metal as the brakes went into action; and a banging of heavy steel as the buffers struck one another, bringing the train to an abrupt halt, throwing the entire cargo off balance once again. Turmoil and commotion. Exhausted, we fell one on top of the other. It was very dark and very silent outside. Fear filled my heart, causing the blood to rush to my head and hammer at my temples. My senses sharpened, like an animal in the stockyard smelling blood and death. The wagon was filled with panic. Only lamenting and mourning broke the silence of the night.
Download or read book World Past to World Present written by Peter N. Stearns and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World Past to World Present: A Sketch of Global History provides an unusually brief and present-focused treatment of human history beginning with the advent of agriculture and ending with considerable attention to world history developments since World War II. This accessible and concise text covers a very real but selected history of the human experience. The book emphasizes the importance of contacts and exchanges among different cultures and economies up to contemporary globalization, and consistent attention is devoted to comparisons among major regional societies. The characteristics of agricultural, and later industrial, societies help establish a larger framework within the text. Peter N. Stearns works to connect past developments to contemporary global patterns and problems, explicitly balancing major changes with significant continuities. Key features include: A "no-frills" approach to an expansive stretch of human history Encourages students to understand the importance of studying history by focusing on aspects of the past that are particularly useful in assessing the current state of the world Invites instructors to combine the advantages of systematic summary coverage with varied supplementary reading Nine maps illustrate important movements and civilizations throughout the world. Truly international in coverage, this book has been specifically designed as a core text for Global History survey courses.
Download or read book Giants from the Past written by and published by . This book was released on 1983-01-01 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A description of the first animals, like the mastodon, & how they evolved during the Ice Age.
Download or read book The Transformation of the World written by Jürgen Osterhammel and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 1192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A panoramic global history of the nineteenth century A monumental history of the nineteenth century, The Transformation of the World offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a world in transition. Jürgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves beyond conventional Eurocentric and chronological accounts of the era, presenting instead a truly global history of breathtaking scope and towering erudition. He examines the powerful and complex forces that drove global change during the "long nineteenth century," taking readers from New York to New Delhi, from the Latin American revolutions to the Taiping Rebellion, from the perils and promise of Europe's transatlantic labor markets to the hardships endured by nomadic, tribal peoples across the planet. Osterhammel describes a world increasingly networked by the telegraph, the steamship, and the railways. He explores the changing relationship between human beings and nature, looks at the importance of cities, explains the role slavery and its abolition played in the emergence of new nations, challenges the widely held belief that the nineteenth century witnessed the triumph of the nation-state, and much more. This is the highly anticipated English edition of the spectacularly successful and critically acclaimed German book, which is also being translated into Chinese, Polish, Russian, and French. Indispensable for any historian, The Transformation of the World sheds important new light on this momentous epoch, showing how the nineteenth century paved the way for the global catastrophes of the twentieth century, yet how it also gave rise to pacifism, liberalism, the trade union, and a host of other crucial developments.
Download or read book Who Owns History written by Eric Foner and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2003-04-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking new book from one of America's finest historians "History," wrote James Baldwin, "does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do." Rarely has Baldwin's insight been more forcefully confirmed than during the past few decades. History has become a matter of public controversy, as Americans clash over such things as museum presentations, the flying of the Confederate flag, or reparations for slavery. So whose history is being written? Who owns it? In Who Owns History?, Eric Foner proposes his answer to these and other questions about the historian's relationship to the world of the past and future. He reconsiders his own earlier ideas and those of the pathbreaking Richard Hofstadter. He also examines international changes during the past two decades--globalization, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of apartheid in South Africa--and their effects on historical consciousness. He concludes with considerations of the enduring, but often misunderstood, legacies of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. This is a provocative, even controversial, study of the reasons we care about history--or should.
Download or read book History Disrupted written by Jason Steinhauer and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Internet has changed the past. Social media, Wikipedia, mobile networks, and the viral and visual nature of the Web have inundated the public sphere with historical information and misinformation, changing what we know about our history and History as a discipline. This is the first book to chronicle how and why it matters. Why does History matter at all? What role do history and the past play in our democracy? Our economy? Our understanding of ourselves? How do questions of history intersect with today’s most pressing debates about technology; the role of the media; journalism; tribalism; education; identity politics; the future of government, civilization, and the planet? At the start of a new decade, in the midst of growing political division around the world, this information is critical to an engaged citizenry. As we collectively grapple with the effects of technology and its capacity to destabilize our societies, scholars, educators and the general public should be aware of how the Web and social media shape what we know about ourselves - and crucially, about our past.
Download or read book World History written by Candice Goucher and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World History: Journeys from Past to Present uses common themes to present an integrated and comprehensive survey of human history from its origins to the present day. By weaving together thematic and regional perspectives in coherent chronological narratives, Goucher and Walton transform the overwhelming sweep of the human past into a truly global story that is relevant to the contemporary issues of our time. Revised and updated throughout, the second edition of this innovative textbook combines clear chronological progression with thematically focused chapters divided into six parts as follows: PART 1. EMERGENCE (Human origins to 500 CE) PART 2. ORDER (1 CE-1500 CE) PART 3. CONNECTIONS (500-1600 CE) PART 4. BRIDGING WORLDS (1300-1800 CE) PART 5. TRANSFORMING LIVES (1500-1900) PART 6. FORGING A GLOBAL COMMUNITY (1800- Present) The expanded new edition features an impressive full-color design with a host of illustrations, maps and primary source excerpts integrated throughout. Chapter opening timelines supply context for the material ahead, while end of chapter questions and annotated additional resources provide students with the tools for independent study. Each chapter and part boasts introductory and summary essays that guide the reader in comprehending the relevant theme. In addition, the companion website offers a range of resources including an interactive historical timeline, an indispensable study skills section for students, tips for teaching and learning thematically, and PowerPoint slides, lecture material and discussion questions in a password protected area for instructors. This textbook provides a basic introduction for all students of World History, incorporating thematic perspectives that encourage critical thinking, link to globally relevant contemporary issues, and stimulate further study.
Download or read book The Ends of the World written by Peter Brannen and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Vox’s Most Important Books of the Decade New York Times Editors' Choice 2017 Forbes Top 10 Best Environment, Climate, and Conservation Book of 2017 As new groundbreaking research suggests that climate change played a major role in the most extreme catastrophes in the planet's history, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen takes us on a wild ride through the planet's five mass extinctions and, in the process, offers us a glimpse of our increasingly dangerous future Our world has ended five times: it has been broiled, frozen, poison-gassed, smothered, and pelted by asteroids. In The Ends of the World, Peter Brannen dives into deep time, exploring Earth’s past dead ends, and in the process, offers us a glimpse of our possible future. Many scientists now believe that the climate shifts of the twenty-first century have analogs in these five extinctions. Using the visible clues these devastations have left behind in the fossil record, The Ends of the World takes us inside “scenes of the crime,” from South Africa to the New York Palisades, to tell the story of each extinction. Brannen examines the fossil record—which is rife with creatures like dragonflies the size of sea gulls and guillotine-mouthed fish—and introduces us to the researchers on the front lines who, using the forensic tools of modern science, are piecing together what really happened at the crime scenes of the Earth’s biggest whodunits. Part road trip, part history, and part cautionary tale, The Ends of the World takes us on a tour of the ways that our planet has clawed itself back from the grave, and casts our future in a completely new light.
Download or read book World History written by Charles Kahn and published by Portage & Main Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In World History: Societies of the Past, students explore societies of the past and see the influences and impact history has on their lives today. The textbook provides students with an easy-to-understand and in-depth look at human societies?from early hunters-gatherers to ancient societies to the beginnings of modern-day societies (1850 CE). A chronological approach explores social, environmental, political, economic, cultural, and technological issues that remain relevant in today's world. To help your students visualize historical situations and events, the textbook includes: hundreds of vibrant illustrations and historical artwork detailed maps, diagrams, and charts informative timelines questions, summaries, and quick facts stories of everyday people Recommended by Manitoba Education, Citizenship and Youth as a Manitoba Grade 7 Social Studies Learning Resource. recommended for British Columbia grade 7 classrooms
Download or read book Navigating World History written by P. Manning and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-05-15 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World history has expanded dramatically in recent years, primarily as a teaching field, and increasingly as a research field. Growing numbers of teachers and Ph.Ds in history are required to teach the subject. They must be current on topics from human evolution to industrial development in Song-dynasty China to today's disease patterns - and then link these disparate topics into a coherent course. Numerous textbooks in print and in preparation summarize the field of world history at an introductory level. But good teaching also requires advanced training for teachers, and access to a stream of new research from scholars trained as world historians. In this book, Patrick Manning provides the first comprehensive overview of the academic field of world history. He reviews patterns of research and debate, and proposes guidelines for study by teachers and by researchers in world history.
Download or read book Discovering Our Past written by Jackson J. Spielvogel and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evaluate students' progress with the printed booklet of Chapter Tests and Lesson Quizzes. Preview online test questions or print for paper and pencil tests. Chapter tests include traditional and document-based question tests.
Download or read book The World I Left Behind written by Luba Brezhneva and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1995 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With touching, terrifying revelations, this candid account by the niece of the man who headed the USSR for 18 years has the history, poetry, and passion of a great Russian novel. "Moving, rich in detail . . . and a great general view".--Robert Conquest, from the Introduction.
Download or read book Moved by the Past written by Eelco Runia and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians go to great lengths to avoid confronting discontinuity, searching for explanations as to why such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, and the introduction of the euro logically develop from what came before. Moved by the Past radically breaks with this tradition of predating the past, incites us to fully acknowledge the discontinuous nature of discontinuities, and proposes to use the fact that history is propelled by unforeseeable leaps and bounds as a starting point for a truly evolutionary conception of history. Integrating research from a variety of disciplines, Eelco Runia identifies two modes of being "moved by the past": regressive and revolutionary. In the regressive mode, the past may either overwhelm us—as in nostalgia—or provoke us to act out what we believe to be solidly dead. When we are moved by the past in a revolutionary sense, we may be said to embody history: we burn our bridges behind us and create accomplished facts we have no choice but to live up to. In the final thesis of Moved by the Past, humans energize their own evolution by habitually creating situations ("catastrophes" or sublime historical events) that put a premium on mutations. This book therefore illuminates how every now and then we chase ourselves away from what we were and force ourselves to become what we are. Proposing a simple yet radical change in perspective, Runia profoundly reorients how we think and theorize about history.
Download or read book Between the World and Me written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by One World. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
Download or read book The Ice at the End of the World written by Jon Gertner and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting, urgent account of the explorers and scientists racing to understand the rapidly melting ice sheet in Greenland, a dramatic harbinger of climate change “Jon Gertner takes readers to spots few journalists or even explorers have visited. The result is a gripping and important book.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The Christian Science Monitor • Library Journal Greenland: a remote, mysterious island five times the size of California but with a population of just 56,000. The ice sheet that covers it is 700 miles wide and 1,500 miles long, and is composed of nearly three quadrillion tons of ice. For the last 150 years, explorers and scientists have sought to understand Greenland—at first hoping that it would serve as a gateway to the North Pole, and later coming to realize that it contained essential information about our climate. Locked within this vast and frozen white desert are some of the most profound secrets about our planet and its future. Greenland’s ice doesn’t just tell us where we’ve been. More urgently, it tells us where we’re headed. In The Ice at the End of the World, Jon Gertner explains how Greenland has evolved from one of earth’s last frontiers to its largest scientific laboratory. The history of Greenland’s ice begins with the explorers who arrived here at the turn of the twentieth century—first on foot, then on skis, then on crude, motorized sleds—and embarked on grueling expeditions that took as long as a year and often ended in frostbitten tragedy. Their original goal was simple: to conquer Greenland’s seemingly infinite interior. Yet their efforts eventually gave way to scientists who built lonely encampments out on the ice and began drilling—one mile, two miles down. Their aim was to pull up ice cores that could reveal the deepest mysteries of earth’s past, going back hundreds of thousands of years. Today, scientists from all over the world are deploying every technological tool available to uncover the secrets of this frozen island before it’s too late. As Greenland’s ice melts and runs off into the sea, it not only threatens to affect hundreds of millions of people who live in coastal areas. It will also have drastic effects on ocean currents, weather systems, economies, and migration patterns. Gertner chronicles the unfathomable hardships, amazing discoveries, and scientific achievements of the Arctic’s explorers and researchers with a transporting, deeply intelligent style—and a keen sense of what this work means for the rest of us. The melting ice sheet in Greenland is, in a way, an analog for time. It contains the past. It reflects the present. It can also tell us how much time we might have left.
Download or read book World History written by Larry S. Krieger and published by D C Heath & Company. This book was released on 1994-02 with total page 940 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
