Great statesmen and gentlemen, men of honor and rank, seem to be phenomena of a bygone Aristocratic era. Aristocracies, which emphasize rank, and value difference, quality, beauty, rootedness, continuity, stand in direct contrast to democracies, which value equality, autonomy, novelty, standardization, quantity, utility and mobility. Is there any place for aristocratic values and virtues in the modern democratic social and political order? This volume consists of essays by political theori...

In this latest addition to the War & Conflict Through the Ages series, Brian Sandberg offers a truly global examination of the intersections between war, culture, and society in the early modern period. He traces the innovative military technologies and practices that emerged around 1500, exploring the different forms of warfare including dynastic war, religious warfare, raiding warfare, and peasant revolt that shaped conflicts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He ex...

How did warrior nobles’ practices of violence shape provincial society and the royal state in early seventeenth-century France?Warrior nobles frequently armed themselves for civil war in southern France during the troubled early seventeenth century. These bellicose nobles’ practices of violence shaped provincial society and the royal state in early modern France. The southern French provinces of Guyenne and Languedoc suffered almost continual religious strife and c...

This is a completely new and updated edition of J. M. Roberts and Odd Arne Westad's widely acclaimed, landmark bestseller The Penguin History of the World.For generations of readers The Penguin History of the World has been one of the great cultural experiences - the entire story of human endeavour laid out in all its grandeur and folly, drama and pain in a single authoritative book. Now, for the first time, it has been completely overhauled for its 6th edition - ...

Fresh, exciting and vividly readable, this is popular history at its very best.Our understanding of world history is changing, as new discoveries are made on all the continents and old prejudices are being challenged. In this truly global journey, political journalist Andrew Marr revisits some of the traditional epic stories, from classical Greece and Rome to the rise of Napoleon, but surrounds them with less familiar material, from Peru to the Ukraine, China to th...

Mankind has come a long way since our ancestors first stood up on two feet, but how did we get to where we are today? This book tells the story, through conflict and intrigue, power won and lost, great empires built and destroyed.With over 350 illustrations, timelines and box features, A Short History of the World is a comprehensive and entertaining look at the ways in which man has spent his time on earth. Find out how the great Egyptian dynasties crumbled, how medieval E...

Tamerlane was the last of the 'world conquerors': his armies looted and killed from the shores of the Mediterranean to the frontier of China. Nomad horsemen from the Steppes had been the terror of Europe and Asia for centuries, but with Tamerlane's death in 1405, an epoch of history came to an end. The future belonged to the great dynastic empires - Chinese, Mughal, Iranian and Ottoman - where most of Eurasia's culture and wealth was to be found, and to the oceanic voyagers from Eurasia's ...

A study of events of 1492 and how they affect the global community of the world of today.The world would end in 1492—so the prophets, soothsayers and stargazers said. They were right. Their world did end. But ours began.In search of the origins of the modern world, 1492 takes readers on a journey around the globe of the time, in the company of real-life travellers, drawing together the threads that began to bind the planet: from the way power and wea...

Finally the Truth about the Rise of the WestModernity developed only in the West—in Europe and North America. Nowhere else did science and democracy arise; nowhere else was slavery outlawed. Only Westerners invented chimneys, musical scores, telescopes, eyeglasses, pianos, electric lights, aspirin, and soap.The question is, Why?Unfortunately, that question has become so politically incorrect that most scholars avoid it. But acclaim...

Discover the scope of the world’s history* With exclusive article by Richard Overy *Beginning with the story of early man, and culminating in the rise of global terrorism and environmental issues, the text is a breathtaking and unrivalled narrative which includes voyages of discovery, revolutions and wars, dynasties and empires.Richard Overy, with a team of historians, presents a factual chronological narrative as well as his own opinion-led piece in an extended art...

**From the author of End TimesIn War and Peace and War, Peter Turchin uses his expertise in evolutionary biology to offer a bold new theory about the course of world history.**Turchin argues that the key to the formation of an empire is a society’s capacity for collective action. He demonstrates that high levels of cooperation are found where people have to band together to fight off a common enemy, and that this kind of cooperation led to the formation of...

The very idea of empire was created in ancient Rome and even today traces of its monuments, literature, and institutions can be found across Europe, the Near East, and North Africa--and sometimes even further afield. In Rome, historian Greg Woolf expertly recounts how this mammoth empire was created, how it was sustained in crisis, and how it shaped the world of its rulers and subjects--a story spanning a millennium and a half of history. The personalities and events of Roman hist...