This remarkable audiobook will challenge your preconceptions of the Dark Ages. Written by internationally-acclaimed historian Thomas Cahill, it paints an accessible and revealing portrait of medieval times. As Europe reaches intellectual stagnation and decline, Ireland bursts forth as a vigorous haven of scholarship in its first century of literacy. How the Irish Saved Civilization will change forever the way we look at our past, and ourselves.

"Describes the social and economic structure of life in the Renaissance (from roughly 1400-1600), including the ruling classes, the peasantry, the urban dwellers, and members of the Church and the role each group played in shaping European civilization"--Provided by publisher.

The brilliance of the Renaissance laid the foundation of the modern world. Textbooks tell us that it came about as a result of a rediscovery of the ideas and ideals of classical Greece and Rome. But now bestselling historian Gavin Menzies makes the startling argument that in the year 1434, China--then the world's most technologically advanced civilization--provided the spark that set the European Renaissance ablaze. From that date onward, Europeans...

The twentieth century was born not in the trenches of the Somme, but rather in the fifteen years preceding World War I. In this short span of time, a new world order was emerging in ultimately tragic contradiction to the old. The major topics of the day: terrorism, globalization, immigration, consumerism, the collapse of moral values, and the rivalry of superpowers. These were the years in which the political and personal repercussions of the Industrial...

This six part series explores the influence on ancient culture on our lives today. Host Michael Wood visits the ancient cities and great ports of India and China, the deserts of Egypt and Iraq, the Mexico of the Inca, Aztec and Mayan peoples, the Greek and Roman monuments of Europe and the jungles of Central America searching for the living legacies of these once great civilizations. The series traces how the institutions that arose with urban civilization...