Ancient Politics

From stories of resurrected mummies and thousand-year-old curses to powerful pharaohs and the coveted treasures of the Great Pyramids, ancient Egypt has had an unfaltering grip on the modern imagination. Now, in Egyptian Mythology, Geraldine Pinch offers a comprehensive introduction that untangles the mystery of Egyptian myth.

In 45 BCE, the Roman statesman Cicero fell to pieces when his beloved daughter, Tullia, died from complications of childbirth. But from the depths of despair, Cicero fought his way back. In an effort to cope with his loss, he wrote a consolation speech—not for others, as had always been done, but for himself. And it worked. Cicero's Consolation was something new in literature, equal parts philosophy and motivational speech.

The philosophy of Ancient Greece provides the background of Western ethical thought and politics. In this approachable introduction, Hugh Griffith, a leading translator of Plato, covers the main ground from the Pre-Socratics through Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans.

Complete in itself, this volume originated as a commentary and expansion of Manly P. Hall's masterpiece of symbolic philosophy, The Secret Teachings of All Ages. In Lectures on Ancient Philosophy, Manly P. Hall expands on the philosophical, metaphysical, and cosmological themes introduced in his classic work, The Secret Teachings of All Ages.

What is love? In poetry, songs, fiction, movies, psychology, and philosophy, love has been described, admired, lamented, and dissected in endless ways. Is love based on physical attraction? Does it bring out our better selves? How does it relate to sex? Is love divine? Plato's Symposium is one of the oldest, most influential, and most profound explorations of such questions—it is even the source of the idea of "Platonic love."

It was an explosion that reverberated across the country—and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America. On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air. When at last the wreckage had been sifted and the hospital triage units consulted, twenty-one people were declared dead and dozens more injured. But as it turned out, this was just a prelude to the devastation that was to come.

The book is one of the most influential ethical treatises of all time. Written in 350 BC, it identifies happiness as life's goal. How do we achieve this goal? Not through the satisfactions that come from pleasure, wealth, or fame. According to Aristotle, the true path to happiness lies in contemplation of philosophic truth. This is the only action through which humans can exercise their distinctively unique trait: the ability to reason.

The Babylonians were one of the earliest of history's great ancient civilizations, and the most famous Babylonian of them all was Hammurabi, who came to the throne as the first king of the Babylonian empire around the beginning of the 18th century B.C. Hammurabi had a long and fruitful reign that saw him consolidate most of Mesopotamia under his control, but he's best known today for Hammurabi's Code, one of the earliest known code of laws in human history.

Papyrus rolls and Twitter have much in common, as each was their generation's signature means of "instant" communication. Indeed, as Tom Standage reveals in his scintillating new audiobook, social media is anything but a new phenomenon. From the papyrus letters that Roman statesmen used to exchange news across the Empire to the advent of hand-printed tracts of the Reformation to the pamphlets that spread propaganda during the American and French revolutions, Standage chronicles the increasingly sophisticated ways people shared information with each other....

In this book in praise of wait times, award-winning author Jason Farman passionately argues that the delay between call and answer has always been an important part of the message. Traveling backward from our current era of Twitter and texts, Farman describes how societies have worked to eliminate waiting in communication and how they have interpreted those times' meanings. And in a rebuttal to the demand for instant communication, Farman makes a powerful case for why good things can come to those who wait.

In 1799, a French Army officer was rebuilding the defenses of a fort on the banks of the Nile when he discovered an ancient stele fragment bearing a decree inscribed in three different scripts. So begins one of the most familiar tales in Egyptology - that of the Rosetta Stone and the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This book draws on fresh archival evidence to provide a major new account of how the English polymath Thomas Young and the French philologist Jean-François Champollion vied to be the first to solve the riddle of the Rosetta.

The Nature of Things was written in the 1st century BC by Roman polymath Lucretius. It is written as a didactic poem, and explains Epicurean physics.

The great pyramids of Giza have intrigued humanity for thousands of years. Questions about the construction and the purpose of these majestic monuments have existed since the middle period of ancient Egyptian civilization; in the sixth century B.C., Herodotus was the first of generations of explorers to travel to Egypt in an attempt to unlock their secrets. Recent cutting-edge research has uncovered information, unimaginable to previous generations, about how and why they were built.

The story of the worlds best-remembered celebrity couple, set against the political backdrop of their time. Oceans of mythology have grown up around them, all of which Diana Preston explores in her stirring history of the lives and times of a couple whose names more than two millennia later still invoke passion, curiosity, and intrigue.

Thieves of Baghdad immerses the listener into the rich culture, the colorful characters, the double-dealing, and the derring-do, to sort out once and for all what actually happened during the chaos of the Baghdad invasion, exactly how the thefts took place, and how the most notable objects were retrieved. We hear Bogdanos and his team going on raids and negotiating recoveries, blowing open safes, and mingling in the marketplaces, often encountering an assortment of rogues and villains.

Ancient Greece has laid way for some of the most influential people, systems and stories of our civilization. It is hard to believe on one hand because technology-wise the Greeks were very primitive, yet on the other hand they were essentially on of the earliest roots of Western civilization.

Publicada en 1940 y considerada una obra maestra, La vida privada y pública de Sócrates consagró a René Kraus como biógrafo de excepción. René Kraus realiza impagables descripciones del filósofo, de algunos de sus célebres contemporáneos y del ambiente de la ciudad y la época, subrayando la tesis que subyace en esta obra: que los seres excepcionales, incluso cuando son incomprendidos y maltratados en vida, terminan imponiendo su elevado ejemplo moral y proporcionan a la humanidad un horizonte de civilización.

Analyze thousands of years of giant skeletons from seven to 15 feet tall, along with DNA evidence, genetic mutations, newspaper articles, archeological notes, and excerpts from the Smithsonian Institution's own records.

Bad Girls of Ancient Greece contains profiles of wayward wives, mad mothers, scandalous sisters and damsels, that quite frankly, caused others A LOT of stress in the ancient world. With the ever-growing popularity of mythological retellings, Lizzy Tiffin has written THE guide to all of the baddies of ancient Greece. This book stands as a reminder that us women really have been badasses since the start.

The tide of modern life is sweeping us even further into isolation—away from each other, from the world, from ourselves. To turn this tide, Lama Tsomo has created the latest addition to her Ancient Wisdom for Our Times series: Deepening Wisdom, Deepening Connection. Building on the ideas and practices in the first two books—Why Bother: An Introduction and Wisdom Compassion (Starting with Yourself)—this new volume actively engages listeners, expanding our understanding and guiding our practice in the several key areas.