New York Times Bestseller

A Summer Reading Pick for President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg

From 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

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A glittering, evocative, fascinating, story-filled portrait of Venice, the ultimate city, embracing facts and romance, history and artists, carnival masks and leper colonies, wars and sieges, and scandals and seductions.

In this insightful book, Thomas Cahill, internationally-acclaimed historian and author of the runaway bestseller How the Irish Saved Civilization, reveals the changes in thinking that made Western civilization possible. A New York Times best-seller, The Gifts of the Jews is his accessible portrait of an ancient society and their vision that would later inspire the concept of individual worth. Until the third millennium, it was a widely-held belief...

Ms. Frizzle and her tour group are transported to China 1000 years in the past, where they learn how rice, tea and silk are grown and harvested, and visit the Emperor in the Forbidden City.

Historian Kriwaczek (Yiddish Civilization) brings to life the world of ancient Mesopotamia and the city of Babylon, tracing their rise from a loose federation to a monarchy to the rise of ancient Sumerian civilization, with its tales of the Great Flood and the epics of semidivine heroes such as Gilgamesh. A history of the ancient city credited with establishing the foundations of modern civilization documents its rise and fall over thousands of years...

Historian Michael Wood chronicles the history of the Indian subcontinent, the richness and diversity of its peoples, and its continuing relevance in today's world.

"Documents the salvaging of the first Etruscan ship ever found: a spectacular wreck off the coast of southern France with a perfectly preserved lower hull and laden with hundreds of amphorae. Lying on the seabed for thousands of years, this vessel and its cargo are a tantalizing link to a civilization that has, as yet, given up too few of its mysteries"--Container.

" Among the extensive writing available about the history of ancient Greece, there is precious little about the city-state of Thebes. At one point the most powerful city in ancient Greece, Thebes has been long overshadowed by its better-known rivals, Athens and Sparta. In Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece, acclaimed classicist and historian Paul Cartledge brings the city vividly to life and argues that it is central to our understanding...

A sweeping new history of how climate change and disease helped bring down the Roman Empire Here is the monumental retelling of one of the most consequential chapters of human history: the fall of the Roman Empire. The Fate of Rome is the first book to examine the catastrophic role that climate change and infectious diseases played in the collapse of Rome's power -- a story of nature's triumph over human ambition. Interweaving a grand historical narrative...