Recommendations based on "Why I Am a Hindu"

Renowned moral philosopher Jonathan Glover confronts the brutal history of the twentieth century to unravel the mystery of why so many atrocities occurred. In a new preface, Glover brings the book through the post-September 11 era and into our own time—and asks whether humankind can "weaken the grip war has on us."Praise for the first edition:“It is hard to imagine a more important book. Glover makes an overwhelming case for the need to understand our own inhumanity, and reduce or eliminate the ways in which it can express itself—and he then begins the task himself. Humanity isan extraordinary achievement.”—Peter Singer, Princeton University“This is an extraordinary book: brilliant, haunting and uniquely important. Almost 40 years ago a president read a best seller and avoided a holocaust. I like to think that some of the leaders and followers of tomorrow will read Humanity.”—Steven Pinker, New York Times Book Review

Official U.S. edition with full color illustrations throughout.New York Times BestsellerA Summer Reading Pick for President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark ZuckerbergFrom a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.”One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem.

Ted Gioia's History of Jazz has been universally hailed as a classic--acclaimed by jazz critics and fans around the world. Now Gioia brings his magnificent work completely up-to-date, drawing on the latest research and revisiting virtually every aspect of the music, past and present.Gioia tells the story of jazz as it had never been told before, in a book that brilliantly portrays the legendary jazz players, the breakthrough styles, and the world in which it evolved. Here are the giants of jazz and the great moments of jazz history--Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, cool jazz greats such as Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, and Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie's advocacy of modern jazz in the 1940s, Miles Davis's 1955 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, Ornette Coleman's experiments with atonality, Pat Metheny's visionary extension of jazz-rock fusion, the contemporary sounds of Wynton Marsalis, and the post-modernists of the current day. Gioia provides the reader with lively portraits of these and many other great musicians, intertwined with vibrant commentary on the music they created. He also evokes the many worlds of jazz, taking the reader to the swamp lands of the Mississippi Delta, the bawdy houses of New Orleans, the rent parties of Harlem, the speakeasies of Chicago during the Jazz Age, the after hours spots of corrupt Kansas city, the Cotton Club, the Savoy, and the other locales where the history of jazz was made. And as he traces the spread of this protean form, Gioia provides much insight into the social context in which the music was born.

This book explores the intriguing idea that there is much more democracy in human history than is generally acknowledged. It establishes that democracy was developing across greater Asia before classical Athens, clung on during the 'Dark Ages', often formed part of indigenous governance and is developing today in unexpected ways.

An Economist Best History Book 2017“History as it should be written.”—Barry Cunliffe, Guardian“Scott hits the nail squarely on the head by exposing the staggering price our ancestors paid for civilization and political order.”—Walter Scheidel, Financial TimesWhy did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of today’s states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family—all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction.Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the “barbarians” who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples.

The idea that religion has a dangerous tendency to promote violence is part of the conventional wisdom of Western societies, and it underlies many of our institutions and policies, from limits on the public role of religion to efforts to promote liberal democracy in the Middle East. William T. Cavanaugh challenges this conventional wisdom by examining how the twin categories of religion and the secular are constructed. A growing body of scholarly work explores how the category 'religion' has been constructed in the modern West and in colonial contexts according to specific configurations of political power. Cavanaugh draws on this scholarship to examine how timeless and transcultural categories of 'religion and 'the secular' are used in arguments that religion causes violence. He argues three points: 1) There is no transhistorical and transcultural essence of religion. What counts as religious or secular in any given context is a function of political configurations of power; 2) Such a transhistorical and transcultural concept of religion as non-rational and prone to violence is one of the foundational legitimating myths of Western society; 3) This myth can be and is used to legitimate neo-colonial violence against non-Western others, particularly the Muslim world.

New Zealand was the last country in the world to be discovered and settled by humankind. It was also the first to introduce full democracy. Between those events, and in the century that followed the franchise, the movements and conflicts of human history have been played out more intensively and more rapidly in New Zealand than anywhere else on Earth.

This third volume of the illustrated adaptation of the internationally bestselling phenomenon, Sapiens: A Graphic History--The Masters of History, tackles the question of the driving force of humanity's fate: is it empire, money, religion--or something else entirely--that unites us? Sometimes history seems like a laundry list of malevolent monarchs, pompous presidents and dastardly dictators. But are they really the ones in the driving seat? Sapiens: A Graphic History--The Masters of History takes us on an immersive and hilarious ride through the human past to discover the forces that change our world, bring us together, and just as often... tear us apart. Grab a front-row seat to the greatest show on earth, and explore the rise of money, religion and empire. Join our fabulous host Heroda Tush, as she wonders: Which historical superhero will display the power to make civilizations rise and fall? Will Mr. Random prove that luck and circumstance prevail? Will Lady Empire convince us of the irrefutable shaping force of conquerors? Or will Clashwoman beat them all to greatness by reminding us of the endless confrontations that seem to forever plague our species? In this next volume of the bestselling graphic series, Yuval Noah Harari, David Vandermeulen and Daniel Casanave continue to present the complicated story of humankind with wit, empathy and originality. Alongside the unlikely cast of new characters, we are rejoined by the familiar faces of Yuval, Zoe, Professor Saraswati, Bill and Cindy (now Romans), Skyman and Captain Dollar. As they travel through time, space and human drama in search of truth, it's impossible not to wonder: why can't we all just get along? This third installment in the Sapiens: A Graphic History series is an engaging, insightful, and colorful retelling of the story of humankind for curious minds of all ages, and can be browsed through on its own or read in sequence with Volumes One and Two.

This landmark study of European international politics is a worthy complement to A.J.P. Taylor's classic The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848-1918. Paul Schroeder's comprehensive and authoritative addition to the Oxford History of Modern Europe charts the course of international history over the turbulent era of 1763-1848 in which the map of Europe and much of the world was redrawn time and again. Schroeder examines the wars, political crises, and intricate diplomatic transactions of the age, many of which, especially the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and the Congress of Vienna and its aftermath, had far-reaching consequences for modern Europe.Schroeder also provides a new sharply revisionist account of the course of international politics over these years and a major reinterpretation of the structure and operation of the international system. He shows how the practice of international politics was transformed in revolutionary ways with extensive and beneficial effects. The Vienna Settlement established peace, he demonstrates, by abandoning, not restoring, the competitive balance-of-power politics of the eighteenth century, and devising a new political equilibrium in its stead. A European consensus on a new political balance was developed, with new rules to maintain it, ushering in a uniquely peaceful, progressive period in European international politics. This wide-ranging and penetrating study will be of great interest to historians, political scientists, and students of international relations.

The destruction of ancient monuments and artworks by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has shocked observers worldwide. Yet iconoclastic erasures of the past date back at least to the mid-1300s BCE, during the Amarna Period of ancient Egypt's 18th dynasty. Far more damage to the past has been inflicted by natural disasters, looters, and public works. Art historian Maxwell Anderson's Antiquities: What Everyone Needs to Know® analyzes continuing threats to our heritage, and offers a balanced account of treaties and laws governing the circulation of objects; the history of collecting antiquities; how forgeries are made and detected; how authentic works are documented, stored, dispersed, and displayed; the politics of sending antiquities back to their countries of origin; and the outlook for an expanded legal market. Anderson provides a summary of challenges ahead, including the future of underwater archaeology, the use of drones, remote sensing, and how invisible markings on antiquities will allow them to be traced. Written in question-and-answer format, the book equips readers with a nuanced understanding of the legal, practical, and moral choices that face us all when confronting antiquities in a museum gallery, shop window, or for sale on the Internet.