Ancient English History

Bestselling author the Countess of Carnarvon tells the thrilling behind-the-scenes story of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun on its centennial, and explores the unparalleled life of family ancestor George Herbert—the famed Egyptologist, world-traveler, and 5th Earl of Carnarvon behind it—whose country house, Highclere Castle, is the setting of the beloved series Downton Abbey.

The early Christian movement spread from Jerusalem in every direction, taking on local cultural expression all around the ancient world. So why do so many people see Christianity as a primarily Western, white religion? In A Multitude of All Peoples, Vince Bantu surveys the geographic range of the early church's history, revealing an alternate, more accurate narrative to that of Christianity as a product of the Western world. Focusing on the necessity for contextualization and indigenous leadership, he draws out practical lessons for intercultural communication of the gospel.

While Nebuchadnezzar’s name lives on mostly due to the Bible and the Hanging Gardens, behind it all was a man documented by the Babylonians and his contemporaries as a competent and successful king.

In Nourishing Diets best-selling author Sally Fallon Morell explores the diets of our primitive ancestors from around the world - from Australian Aborigines and pre-industrialized Europeans to the inhabitants of "Blue Zones" where a high percentage of the populations live to 100 years or more. In looking to the recipes and foods of the past, Fallon Morell points listeners to what they should actually be eating - the key principles of traditional diets from across cultures - and offers recipes to help translate these ideas to the modern home cook.

Homer's Iliad is the famous epic poem set among the tales of Troy. Its subject is the anger of the hero Achilles and its consequences for the warring Greeks and Trojans. Unlike other books on the Iliad, this one combines the detailed expertise of a historian with the sensitivity of a teacher of it as poetry. Lane Fox goes on to consider hallmarks of the poem, its values, implicit and explicit, its characters, its women, its gods and even its horses. He argues repeatedly for its beautiful observation and addresses its parallel use of what is, to us, the natural world.

In The Ark Before Noah, British Museum expert Dr Irving Finkel reveals how decoding the symbols on a 4,000 year old piece of clay enable a radical new interpretation of the Noah's Ark myth. A world authority on the period, Dr Finkel's enthralling real-life detective story began with a most remarkable event at the British Museum - the arrival one day in 2008 of a single, modest-sized Babylonian cuneiform tablet - the palm-sized clay rectangles on which our ancestors created the first documents.

In words that might have been ripped from today's combat dispatches, Steven Pressfield, the best-selling novelist of ancient warfare, returns with a riveting historical novel that re-creates Alexander the Great's invasion of the Afghan kingdoms in 330 B.C., a campaign that eerily foreshadows the tactics, terrors, and frustrations of contemporary conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is difficult to know the Sea People intimately because the records on them aren’t very comprehensive. But we set out to explore the many questions people have about this mysterious civilization. Who were they? Where did they come from? Did they do more than simply pillage, and what impact did they have on society and commerce? Would you be shocked to learn that these mysterious people were more than a band of pirates?

From the creative minds of the scholarly group behind the groundbreaking Jesus Seminar comes this provocative and eye-opening look at the roots of Christianity that offers a thoughtful reconsideration of the first two centuries of the Jesus movement, transforming our understanding of the religion and its early dissemination.

This is the breathtaking adventure of the great Carthaginian general who shook the foundations of Rome. In the world's first "global" conflict, Hannibal Barca marched up and down the Italian peninsula for 18 years, appearing well nigh invincible to a Rome which began to doubt itself for the first time in its history.

Many ancient civilizations have influenced and inspired people in the 21st century. The Greeks and Romans continue to fascinate the West today. But of all the world's civilizations, none have intrigued people more than the Mayans, whose culture, astronomy, language, and mysterious disappearance all continue to captivate people. In 2012 especially, there was a renewed focus on the Mayans, whose advanced calendar led many to speculate the world would end on the same date the Mayan calendar ends.

In the pantheon of ancient men of letters, none hold a more venerated position than the Roman historian, Tacitus, venerated alike for the accuracy of his chronicles as well as for the superiority of his style. He was a writer of unexcelled genius and consummate skill. But his work fell into oblivion not long after his death, and has come down to us based on the text of a single tattered manuscript from the Middle Ages.

In 1886, the U.S. had no navy to speak of. But it did have Alfred T. Mahan, a captain of the U.S. Navy who had spent much of his career observing the exemplary fleets of the British Empire. At age 46, Mahan was just 10 years short of retirement age when the newly formed Naval and War College at Newport, Rhode Island, asked him to lecture on naval history and tactics. Out of these lectures grew a book that would change the world. It's no exaggeration that The Influence of Seapower Upon History affected the outcome of both great world wars. When it was first published in 1890, prime ministers, kings, admirals, and chancellors eagerly studied its strategies, which England first employed to rule the seas. Likewise, all the major powers have used it to shape imperial policies.

In The Geography of Genius, acclaimed travel writer Weiner sets out to examine the connection between our surroundings and our most innovative ideas. He explores the history of places, like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley, to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity.

Set in the northeastern corner of Spain and nestled next to France is the autonomous region of Catalonia. More than seeing themselves as Spaniards, Catalonian people see themselves as Catalan first and foremost, and they all are natively fluent in the language, Catalan. After a tumultuous history during which it bounced back and forth in terms of its political status and relationship to Spain’s central government, Catalonia was granted its autonomy on December 18, 1979. In 2006, it came close to acquiring its total independence, but that status is still being hotly contested.

Mankind has a distinct advantage over other terrestrial species: we talk to one another. But how did we acquire the most advanced form of communication on Earth? Daniel L. Everett, a "bombshell" linguist and "instant folk hero" (Tom Wolfe, Harper's), provides in this sweeping history a comprehensive examination of the evolutionary story of language, from the earliest speaking attempts by hominids to the more than 7,000 languages that exist today.

This is the story of the greatest empire the world has ever known. Simon Baker charts the rise and fall of the world's first superpower, focusing on six momentous turning points that shaped Roman history. Welcome to Rome as you've never seen it before - awesome and splendid, gritty and squalid. From the conquest of the Mediterranean beginning in the third century BC to the destruction of the Roman Empire at the hands of barbarian invaders some seven centuries later, we discover the most critical episodes in Roman history.

From the moderator of The New York Times philosophy blog "The Stone", an audiobook that argues that if we want to understand ourselves, we have to go back to theater, to the stage of our lives.

Dr. Jack Greer's startling discovery beneath the Gulf of Mexico proved to the world we were not alone in the universe. But when images from the Voyager One space probe reveal an alien doomsday ship hurtling toward the Earth, the human race seems marked for extinction. As news of the approaching ship spreads panic around the globe, signs of a sinister plot begin to emerge - one that threatens to unravel the already fragile fabric of society and everything Jack and Dr. Mia Ward have fought for.

Hadrian's Wall is the largest and one of the most enigmatic historical monuments in Britain. Nothing else approaches its vast scale: a land wall running seventy-three miles from east to west and a sea wall stretching at least twenty-six miles down the Cumbrian coast. Many of its forts are as large as Britain's most formidable medieval castles, and the wide ditch dug to the south of the Wall, the vallum, is larger than any surviving prehistoric earthwork.