World History Philosophy

Regardless of how much has been written about it, new information continues to be discovered about the thousands of events that make up the six years that shaped the world we live in today.

Have you ever wondered why the Mali Empire was so wealthy and well-known? Find your answer in our guide about the Mali Empire, and learn about its foundation and rise to fame under Mansa Musa. Within this audiobook, you’ll listen to the humble beginnings and hardships that befell Sundiata Keita as he founded the Mali Empire. His thrilling story leads into how the empire was structured and its early laws and customs.

The story of the rise of modern navigation technology, from radio location to GPS—and the consequent decline of privacy. What does it mean to never get lost? You Are Here examines the rise of our technologically aided era of navigational omniscience—or how we came to know exactly where we are at all times. Filled with tales of scientists and astronauts, inventors and entrepreneurs, You Are Here tells the story of how humankind ingeniously solved one of its oldest and toughest problems—only to herald a new era in which it’s impossible to hide.

The first World War was one of the most devastating conflicts in our history. The tumult and chaos that remained in the wake of the first World War had far-reaching and devastating consequences, not just for Europe and the survivors of the war, but for the entire world. The ruins of Europe provided a fertile breeding ground for fierce nationalism, which led to the rise of the Third Reich and allowed the evil of Adolf Hitler to go unchecked for far too long.

In Rules, historian Lorraine Daston traces their development in the Western tradition and shows how rules have evolved from ancient to modern times. Drawing on a rich trove of examples, including legal treatises, cookbooks, military manuals, traffic regulations, and game handbooks, Daston demonstrates that while the content of rules is dazzlingly diverse, the forms that they take are surprisingly few and long-lived.

In researching one of history's greatest scientific quests, a mission to measure the Earth and define the meter, Ken Alder stumbled on a 200-year-old secret: The meter, it turns out, is in error. This is a story of two men, a secret, and a timeless human dilemma: is it permissible to perpetuate a small lie in the service of a larger truth?

Plato is perhaps the most significant philosopher who has ever lived, and The Republic, composed in Athens in about 375 BC, is widely regarded as his most famous dialogue. Its discussion of the perfect city and the perfect mind laid the foundations for Western culture and, for over 2,000 years, has been the cornerstone of Western philosophy.

End Times is a compelling work of skilled reportage that peels back the layers of complexity around the unthinkable - and inevitable - end of humankind. From asteroids and artificial intelligence to volcanic supereruption to nuclear war, veteran science reporter and TIME editor Bryan Walsh provides a stunning panoramic view of the most catastrophic threats to the human race.

The ancient Greeks hard-wired a tragic sensibility into their culture. By looking disaster squarely in the face, by understanding just how badly things could spiral out of control, they sought to create a communal sense of responsibility and courage - to spur citizens and their leaders to take the difficult actions necessary to avert such a fate. Today, after more than 70 years of great-power peace, Americans have lost their sense of tragedy. They have forgotten that the descent into violence and war has been all too common throughout human history.

Opium tells the extraordinary and at times harrowing tale of how we arrived at today's crisis, "mak[ing] timely and startling connections among painkillers, politics, finance, and society" (Laurence Bergreen). The story begins with the discovery of poppy artifacts in ancient Mesopotamia, and goes on to explore how Greek physicians and obscure chemists discovered opium's effects and refined its power, how colonial empires marketed it around the world, and eventually how international drug companies developed a range of powerful synthetic opioids that led to an addiction epidemic.

We may imagine that science is a process of breakthroughs and light bulb moments. But in reality, science goes wrong 99% of the time. Almost every idea a scientist comes up with is quickly disproved by a failed experiment or rival research. Science moves at a rate of inches per decade and we like it that way. But occasionally, just occasionally, a complete fluke happens and changes everything. This is a rip-roaring adventure through science gone wrong, accidentally changing humanity for the better.

Counsels and Maxims is a classic work by noted German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. His work has influenced some of the modern world's greatest thinkers, including Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Erwin Schrödinger. This piece was originally translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders.

This collection of 24 essays is a perfect introduction to the world of Lewis Thomas. Topics ranging from the riddle of smelling to nuclear proliferation carry the gentle, unassuming persuasiveness that characterizes the author’s work. Here we are also introduced to the concerns that have distinguished Thomas’ literary career: the natural altruism of organisms; the inter-relatedness of all creatures; the fragility of the human species; the uneasiness of life on a threatened planet.

The narrative of the Korean War in the West, and particularly in the United States, tells the tale of a conflict between two global superpowers and competing ideologies in a far-flung corner of the globe. The reality is that the wheels of motion that drove the country to war in 1950 began turning long before American boots set foot on Korean soil. The heart of the conflict was a civil war between a population arbitrarily divided by colonization and the global geopolitics at the end of the Second World War.

The early history of Earth covers such vast stretches of time that years, centuries, and even millennia become virtually meaningless. Instead, paleontologists and scientists who study geochronology divide time into periods and eras.

The definitive history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon agency that has quietly shaped war and technology for nearly 60 years. Founded in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, the agency's original mission was to create "the unimagined weapons of the future". Over the decades, DARPA has been responsible for countless inventions and technologies that extend well beyond military technology.

On August 10, 1632, five men in flowing black robes convened in a somber Roman palazzo to pass judgment on a deceptively simple proposition: that a continuous line is composed of distinct and infinitely tiny parts. With the stroke of a pen the Jesuit fathers banned the doctrine of infinitesimals, announcing that it could never be taught or even mentioned. The concept was deemed dangerous and subversive, a threat to the belief that the world was an orderly place, governed by a strict and unchanging set of rules.

In the scorching summer of 1878, with the Gilded Age in its infancy, three tenacious and brilliant scientists raced to Wyoming and Colorado to observe a rare total solar eclipse. One sought to discover a new planet. Another - an adventuresome female astronomer - fought to prove that science was not anathema to femininity. And a young megalomaniacal inventor, with the tabloid press fast on his heels, sought to test his scientific bona fides and light the world through his revelations.

Bill Bryson’s The Body meets Mary Roach’s Gulp (with a dash of What’s Your Poo Telling You?) in this delightfully weird, richly informative, and unexpectedly lyrical tour of our bodily emissions—revealing that the very parts of us that we seek to hide in embarrassment are actually an essential part of human health, with fascinating social history.

In very recent times humanity has learnt a vast amount about the universe, the past and itself. But through our remarkable successes in acquiring knowledge we have learned how much we have yet to learn: the science we have, for example, addresses just five per cent of the universe, pre-history is still being revealed, with thousands of historical sites yet to be explored, and the new neurosciences of mind and brain are just beginning.