Empfehlungen basierend auf "Children of Ash and Elm A History of the Vikings"

This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values. Writing drove cultures toward linear left-brain thinking and this shift upset the balance between men and women, initiating the decline of the feminine and ushering in patriarchal rule. Examining the cultures of the Israelites, Greeks, Christians, and Muslims, Shlain reinterprets ancient myths and parables in light of his theory. Provocative and inspiring, this book is a paradigm-shattering work that will transform your view of history and the mind.

From the Ice Age to the Cold War and beyond, from Reykjavik to Riga, from Archimedes to Einstein, Alexander to Yeltsin, here between the covers of a single volume Norman Davies tells the story of Europe, East and West, from prehistory to the present day. The book's absorbing narrative lays down the chronological and geographical grid on which the dramas of European history have been played out. It zooms in from the distant focus of Chapter One, which explores the first five million years of the continent's evolution, to the close focus of the last two chapters, which cover the twentieth century at roughly one page per year. In between, Norman Davies presents a huge and sweeping canvas packed with fascinating detail, analysis, and anecdote. Alongside Europe's better-known stories - human, national, and continental - he brings into focus areas often ignored or misunderstood, remembering the stateless nation as well as the nation-state. Minority communities, from heretics and lepers to Jews, Romanies, and Muslims have not been forgotten. This masterly history reveals not only the rich variety of Europe's past but also the many and rewarding prisms through which it can be viewed. Each chapter contains a selection of telephoto `capsules', illustrating narrower themes and topics that cut across the chronological flow. Davies then concludes with a wide-angle `snapshot' of the whole continent as seen from one particular vantage point. The overall effect is stunning: a kind of historical picture album, with panoramic tableaux interspersed by detailed insets and close-ups. Never before has such an ambitious history of Europe been attempted. In range and ambition, the originality of its structure and glittering style, Norman Davies's Europe represents one of the most important and illuminating history books to be published by Oxford. Time Capsules 201 fascinating articles interspersed throughout the narrative focus on incidents or topics as various as The Iceman of the Alps, Erotic Graffiti at Pompeii, Stradivarius, and Psychoanalysing Hitler. Each capsule can be tasted as a separate self-contained morsel; or can be read in conjunction with the narrative into which it is inserted. Snapshots 12 panoramic overviews across the changing map of Europe freeze the frames of the chronological narrative at moments of symbolic importance, such as Knossos 1628 BC, Constantinople AD 330, and Nuremberg 1945. A fully illustrated history Incorporates over 100 superbly detailed maps and diagrams, and 32 pages of black and white plates.

A brilliant new history that dramatically reassesses how far the Viking world extended.Dr Cat Jarman exposes the unexpected routes that Viking travel and trade took - and how these kings of the river were frequent travellers of the Middle East and the Silk Road.One June day late in the eighth century, Norse seafarers arrived at the English island of Lindisfarne. They waged a savage attack on its unsuspecting abbey, and with this, the Age of the Vikings was born. These roving pillagers spent the next few hundred years raiding and trading a path across Northern and Western Europe. Except, that's not quite true. It's just a convenient place to start the story - a story that has seen radical new discoveries over the past few years.Dr Cat Jarman works on the cutting edge of bioarchaeology, using forensic techniques to research the paths of Vikings who came to rest in British soil. By examining teeth that are now over one thousand years old, she can determine childhood diet, and thereby where a specimen was likely born. With radiocarbon dating, she can ascertain a death date down to the range of a few years.In 2012, a carnelian bead came into her temporary possession. River Kings sees her trace its path back to eighth-century Baghdad, discovering along the way that the Vikings' route was far more varied than we might think, that with them came people from the Middle East, not just Scandinavia, and that the reason for all this unexpected integration between the Eastern and Western worlds may well have been a slave trade running through the Silk Road, and all the way to Britain.River Kings is a major reassessment of the Vikings, and of the medieval world as we know it.

Recommended by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy as an exemplary informational text.Designed to accompany Joy Hakim's ten volume A History of US or as a stand alone reference, this collection of great American documents is ideal for all students of American history. Filled with primary sources, the Sourcebook and Index traces the gradual unfolding of ideas of freedom in America through letters, declarations, proclamations, court decisions, speeches, laws, acts, the Constitution, and other writings.About the Series:Master storyteller Joy Hakim has excited millions of young minds with the great drama of American history in her award-winning series A History of US. Recommended by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy as an exemplary informational text, A History of US weaves together exciting stories that bring American history to life. Hailed by reviewers, historians, educators, and parents for its exciting, thought-provoking narrative, the books have been recognized as a break-through tool in teaching history and critical reading skills to young people. In ten books that span from Prehistory to the 21st century, young people will never think of American history as boring again.

The newest volume in the acclaimed Oxford History of the United States series, Contested Continent recounts the origins of "America" and how it came to birth the United States. The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. In the newest volume in the series, Peter C. Mancall recounts how North America was forged from the experiences of millions of Indigenous women and men as well as Europeans and Africans. The first volume of the Oxford History of the United States series, Contested Continent is also the most ambitiously far-ranging history of North America concentrating on the period from c. 1000 to 1680, from the arrival of Norse explorers to an explosion of revolts that underlined the stubborn struggle to master the continent some two centuries after Columbus's landfall. This history spans the continent from the North Atlantic to the West Indies and includes the entire Atlantic basin. Mancall emphasizes the experiences of diverse peoples while, at the same time, telling a new story about the origins of major aspects of American culture. He illuminates the rise of a booming trans-Atlantic economy based on the extraction of abundant American natural resources; the central role that European migrants and their descendants played in the enslavement of Africans and the displacement of Indigenous peoples; and the spread of self-governing polities where many enjoyed religious freedom. None of these developments was inevitable. Conflicts broke out frequently as different peoples battled over precious resources. Europeans' appetites for material gain and expanding Christendom brought horrific consequences for those brutalized, enslaved, and vulnerable to infectious diseases. This is a sweeping history of developments crucial to the eventual founding of the United States. Contested Continent underscores the titanic struggles between the peoples who had populated the Americas for centuries and the migrants from the Old World who initiated changes that created a New World that offered boundless opportunities for some and crushed the aspirations of others.

From the mid-nineteenth century until the Second World War, the energies of Rumanian political and intellectual élites were absorbed by the building of their nation. In this comprehensive and scholarly study Keith Hitchins traces these complex processes and explores how Rumania's leaders attempted to transform the ideology of modern nationhood into strong political, economic, and social institutions and to find ways of preserving independence in an international political and economic order dominated by the great powers. As the new Rumania took shape, the threads of historical continuity remained strikingly evident: in government a strong administrative centralization prevailed, despite the maturing of parliamentary institutions and the diversity of political expression; the national economy remained beholden to agriculture, despite the steady growth of industry; and in cultural life traditional values persisted, despite the adoption of modern forms. In foreign relations the most pressing aim was to unite all Rumanians in a single state and to defend its sovereignty within an uncertain international order. In all these endeavours, the measure of achievement was the West. After the Second World War, when the Communist Party came to power, this historical continuity was broken. The experiment in nation-building gave way to a new ideology, and Rumania now turned to the Soviet political and economic model.

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

The Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt, the Hundred Years War, the War of the Roses... A succession of dramatic social and political events reshaped England in the period 1360 to 1461. In his lucid and penetrating account of this formative period, Gerald Harriss draws on the research of the last thirty years to illuminate late medieval society at its peak, from the triumphalism of Edward III in 1360 to the collapse of Lancastrian rule. The political narrative centres on the deposition of Richard II in 1399 and the establishment of the House of Lancaster, which was in turn overthrown in the Wars of the Roses. Abroad, Henry V's heroic victory at Agincourt in 1415 led to the English conquest of northern France, lasting until 1450. Both produced long term consequences: the first shaped the English constitution up to the Stuart civil war, while the second generated lasting hostility between England and France, and a residual wariness of military intervention in Europe. Equally significant changes occurred in English society. The Black Death produced a crisis in agrarian structures, marked by the Peasants' Revolt in 1381 and the end of serfdom. In landed society distinctive grades of knights, esquires and gentlemen emerged, linked to the nobility in a web of patronage and service, with an ethos of 'good lordship' and fidelity. While the nobility were the king's immediate counsellors, the gentry reflected the concerns of the community of the realm in parliament. An increasingly well-educated and articulate class, they served as MPs and JPs and staffed the growing legal profession. The greater merchants controlled the wool trade, the source of England's wealth, and distributed commodities through a network of towns and markets. The marked individualism of this society, memorably depicted in The Canterbury Tales, was accompanied by a growing sense of national identity, expressed in the use of standard London English. A spate of church building in perpendicular, a distinctive national style, was matched on the one hand by the intensity of Catholic devotion and on the other hand by the proto-Protestantism of John Wyclif and the Lollards.THE NEW OXFORD HISTORY OF ENGLAND The aim of the New Oxford History of England is to give an account of the development of the country over time. It is hard to treat that development as just the history which unfolds within the precise boundaries of England, and a mistake to suggest that this implies a neglect of the histories of the Scots, Irish, and Welsh. Yet the institutional core of the story which runs from Anglo-Saxon times to our own is the story of a state-structure built round the English monarchy and its effective successor, the Crown in Parliament. While the emphasis of individual volumes in the series will vary, the ultimate outcome is intended to be a set of standard and authoritative histories, embodying the scholarship of a generation.

In 1970 the 'cold war' was still cold, Northern Ireland's troubles were escalating, the UK's relations with the EEC were unclear, and corporatist approaches to the economy precariously persisted. By 1990 Communism was crumbling world-wide, Thatcher's economic revolution had occurred, terrorism in Northern Ireland was waning, 'multi-culturalism' was in place, family structures were changing fast, and British political institutions had become controversial. Seven analytic chapters pursue these changes and accumulate rich detail on changes in international relations, landscape and townscape, social framework, family and welfare structures, economic policies and realities, intellect and culture, politics and government. The concluding chapter ranges chronologically even more widely to bring out the interaction of past and present, then asks how far the UK had by 1990 identified its world role. Like Harrison's Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom 1951-1970 (2009) - the immediately preceding volume in this series - Finding a Role? includes a full chronological table and an ample index of names and themes. This, the first thorough, wide-ranging, and synoptic study of the UK so far published on this period, has two overriding aims: to show how British institutions evolved, but also to illuminate changes in the British people: their hopes and fears, values and enjoyments, failures and achievements. It therefore equips its readers to understand events since 1990, and so to decide for themselves where the UK should now be going.

A newly revised and updated edition of an award-winning BBC correspondent's magisterial history of the Balkan regionThis unique and lively history of Balkan geopolitics since the early nineteenth century gives readers the essential historical background to more than one hundred years of events in this war-torn area. No other book covers the entire region, or offers such profound insights into the roots of Balkan violence, or explains so vividly the origins of modern Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania. Now updated to include the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, the capture of all indicted war criminals from the Yugoslav wars, and each state's quest for legitimacy in the European Union, The Balkans explores the often catastrophic relationship between the Balkans and the Great Powers, raising some disturbing questions about Western intervention.