What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens? Yuval Noah Harari challenges everything we know about being human in the perfect read for these unprecedented times.

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it: us.

In this bold and provocative book, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here and where we’re going.

‘I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who’s interested in the history and future of our species’ Bill Gates

‘Interesting and provocative… It gives you a sense of how briefly we’ve been on this Earth’ Barack Obama

First people communities are the groups of huntergatherers and herders, representing the oldest human lineages in Africa, who migrated from as far as East Africa to settle across southern Africa, in what is now Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. These groups, known today as the Khoisan, are represented by the Bushmen (or San) and the Khoe (plural Khoekhoen).

In First People, archaeologist Andrew Smith examines what we know about southern Africa’s earliest inhabitants, drawing on evidence from excavations, rock art, the observations of colonial-era travellers, linguistics, the study of the human genome and the latest academic research.

Richly illustrated, First People is an invaluable and accessible work that reaches from the Middle and Late Stone Age to recent times, and explores how the Khoisan were pushed to the margins of history and society. Smith, who is an expert on the history and prehistory of the Khoisan, paints a knowledgeable and fascinating portrait of their land occupation, migration, survival strategies and cultural practices.

Following a hiatus in the 1960s, the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) in South Africa was revived in 1971. In fascinating detail, Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed bring the inner workings of the NIC to life against the canvas of major political developments in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, and up to the first democratic elections in 1994.

The NIC was relaunched during the rise of the Black Consciousness Movement, which attracted a following among Indian university students, and whose invocation of Indians as Black led to a major debate about ethnic organisations such as the NIC. This debate persisted in the 1980s with the rise of the United Democratic Front and its commitment to non-racialism. The NIC was central to other major debates of the period, most significantly the lines drawn between boycotting and participating in government-created structures such as the Tri-Cameral Parliament. Despite threats of banning and incarceration, the NIC kept attracting recruits who encouraged the development of community organisations, such as students radicalised by the 1980s education boycotts and civic protests. Colour, Class and Community, The Natal Indian Congress, 1971—1994 details how some members of the NIC played dual roles, as members of a legal organisation and as allies of the African National Congress’ underground armed struggle.

Drawing on varied sources, including oral interviews, newspaper reports, and minutes of organisational meetings, this in-depth study tells a largely untold history, challenging existing narratives around Indian ‘cabalism’, and bringing the African and Indian political story into present debates about race, class and nation.

This detailed Handbook to the Iron Age covers the last 2,000 years in Southern Africa.

The first part of the book outlines essential topics such as settlement organization, stonewalled patterns, ritual residues, long-distance trade, and ancient mining. Part two presents a comprehensive culture-history sequence through ceramic analyses, showing distributions, stylistic types, and characteristic pieces. The final section reviews and updates the main debates about black prehistory, including migration vs. diffusion, the role of cattle, the origins of Mapungubwe, the rise and fall of Great Zimbabwe, as well as the archaeology of the Venda, the Sotho-Tswana, and the Nguni speakers.

Handbook to the Iron Age is an abundantly illustrated study that is accessible to a wide range of people interested in African prehistory.

An interrogation of why we don't talk to strangers, what happens when we do, and why it affects everything from the rise and fall of nations to personal health and wellbeing, in the tradition of Susan Cain's Quiet and Rutger Bregman's Humankind.

When was the last time you spoke to a stranger? In our cities, we stand in silent buses and tube carriages, barely acknowledging one another. Online, we retreat into silos and carefully curate who we interact with. But while we often fear strangers, or blame them for the ills of society, history and science show us that they are actually our solution. Throughout human history, our attitude to the stranger has determined the fate and wellbeing of both nations and individuals. A raft of new science confirms that the more we open ourselves up to encounters with those we don't know, the healthier we are.

In The Power of Strangers, with the help of sociologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, philosophers, political scientists and historians, Joe Keohane learns how we're wired to sometimes fear, distrust and even hate strangers, and discovers what happens to us when we indulge those biases. At the same time, he digs into a growing body of cutting-edge research on the surprising social and psychological benefits that come from talking to strangers; how even passing interactions can enhance empathy, happiness, and cognitive development, ease loneliness and isolation, and root us in the world, deepening our sense of belonging.

Warm, erudite and profound, this deeply researched book will make you reconsider how you perceive and approach strangers: paradoxically, strangers can help us become more fully ourselves.

Gender exists in almost every society as a way of organizing its people. Gender is used to assign certain responsibilities, obligations, and privileges to some, and to deny them to others. In Gender: A World History, Susan Kingsley Kent tells the story of this seemingly simple but in fact quite complex concept. With historical perspective she critically examines our everyday understandings of women and men, masculinity and femininity, and sexual difference in general. Central to this account is the conviction that gender is neither natural nor innocent. What passes for masculinity and femininity in one society might not do so in another. Even the passing of time can change what gender looks like in a particular culture. Thinking about the history of gender can also shed light on other types of relations, such as those between a government and its people, between different social classes, and between a colony and its colonizer. Ranging from prehistory to the present, this book presents a chronological picture of gender across the globe. From Hatshepsut and the rise of patriarchy in the ancient world, to the Bushido code of the samurai in wartime, to Susan B. Anthony and the women's rights movement in the United States, to the gay and trans rights movements of today, the force of gender in world history cannot be denied.

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

2025 marks the 80th anniversary of VE Day. Read and remember the history that led to this important moment.

'This book is his best yet . . . Dimbleby’s work is in a different league, told with such skill and judgment' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

A gripping and authoritative account of the year that sealed the fate of the Nazis, from the bestselling historian

June 1944: In Operation Bagration, more than two million Red Army soldiers, facing 500,000 German soldiers, finally avenged their defeat in Operation Barbarossa in 1941. The same month saw the Allies triumph on the beaches of Normandy, but, despite the myths that remain, it was the events on the Eastern Front that sealed Hitler's fate and destroyed Nazism.

In his new book, bestselling historian Jonathan Dimbleby describes and analyses this momentous year, covering the military, political and diplomatic story in his evocative style. Drawing on previously untranslated German, Russian and Polish sources, we see how sophisticated new forms of deception and ruthless Partisan warfare shifted the Soviets’ fortunes, how their triumphs effectively gave Stalin authority to occupy Eastern Europe and how it was the events of 1944 that enabled Stalin to dictate the terms of the post-war settlement, laying the foundations for the Cold War . . .

A great historian can make clear the connections between the first Homo sapiens and today's version of the species, and a great storyteller can make those connections come alive. David Christian is both, and This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity makes the journey - from the earliest foraging era to our own modern era - a fascinating one. Enter This Fleeting World - and give up the preconception that anything old is boring.

This volume offers a lively introduction to Russia's dramatic history and the striking changes that characterize its story. Distinguished authors Barbara Alpern Engel and Janet Martin show how Russia's peoples met the constant challenges posed by geography, climate, availability of natural resources, and devastating foreign invasions, and rose to become the world's second largest land empire. The book describes the circumstances that led to the world's first communist society in 1917, and traces the global consequences of Russia's long confrontation with the United States, which took place virtually everywhere and for decades provided a model for societies seeking development independent of capitalism. This book also brings the story of Russia's arduous and costly climb to great power to a personal level through the stories of individual women and men-leading figures who played pivotal roles as well as less prominent individuals from a range of social backgrounds whose voices illuminate the human consequences of sweeping historical change. As was and is true of Russia itself, this story encompasses a wide variety of ethnicities, peoples who became part of the Russian empire and suffered or benefited from its leaders' efforts to meld a multiethnic polity into a coherent political entity. The book examines how Russia served as a conduit for people, ideas, and commodities flowing between east and west, north and south, and absorbed and adapted influences from both Europe and Asia and how it came to play an increasingly important role on a regional and, ultimately, global scale.

Here is a fascinating compact history of Chinese political, economic, and cultural life, ranging from the origins of civilization in China to the beginning of the 21st century. Historian Paul Ropp combines vivid story-telling with astute analysis to shed light on some of the larger questions of Chinese history. What is distinctive about China in comparison with other civilizations? What have been the major changes and continuities in Chinese life over the past four millennia? Offering a global perspective, the book shows how China's nomadic neighbors to the north and west influenced much of the political, military, and even cultural history of China. Ropp also examines Sino-Indian relations, highlighting the impact of the thriving trade between India and China as well as the profound effect of Indian Buddhism on Chinese life. Finally, the author discusses the humiliation of China at the hands of Western powers and Japan, explaining how these recent events have shaped China's quest for wealth, power and respect today, and have colored China's perception of its own place in world history.

The City: A World History tells the story of the rise and development of urban centers from ancient times to the twenty-first century. It begins with the establishment of the first cities in the Near East in the fourth millennium BCE, and goes on to examine urban growth in the Indus River Valley in India, as well as Egypt and areas that bordered the Mediterranean Sea. Athens, Alexandria, and Rome stand out both politically and culturally. With the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, European cities entered into a long period of waning and deterioration. But elsewhere, great cities-among them, Constantinople, Baghdad, Chang'an, and Tenochtitlan-thrived. In the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, urban growth resumed in Europe, giving rise to cities like Florence, Paris, and London. This urban growth also accelerated in parts of the world that came under European control, such as Philadelphia in the nascent United States. As the Industrial Revolution swept through in the nineteenth century, cities grew rapidly. Their expansion resulted in a slew of social problems and political disruptions, but it was accompanied by impressive measures designed to improve urban life. Meanwhile, colonial cities bore the imprint of European imperialism. Finally, the book turns to the years since 1914, guided by a few themes: the impact of war and revolution; urban reconstruction after 1945; migration out of many cities in the United States into growing suburbs; and the explosive growth of "megacities" in the developing world.

In the past sixty years, oral history has moved from the periphery to the mainstream of academic studies and is now employed as a research tool by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, medical therapists, documentary film makers, and educators at all levels. The Oxford Handbook of Oral History brings together forty authors on five continents to address the evolution of oral history, the impact of digital technology, the most recent methodological and archival issues, and the application of oral history to both scholarly research and public presentations. The volume is addressed to seasoned practitioners as well as to newcomers, offering diverse perspectives on the current state of the field and its likely future developments. Some of its chapters survey large areas of oral history research and examine how they developed; others offer case studies that deal with specific projects, issues, and applications of oral history. From the Holocaust, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, the Falklands War in Argentina, the Velvet Revolution in Eastern Europe, to memories of September 11, 2001 and of Hurricane Katrina, the creative and essential efforts of oral historians worldwide are examined and explained in this multipurpose handbook.

WINNER OF THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD
WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2016

'A thrilling adventure story' Bill Bryson
'Dazzling' Literary Review
'Brilliant' Sunday Express
'Extraordinary and gripping' New Scientist
'A superb biography' The Economist
'An exhilarating armchair voyage' GILES MILTON, Mail on Sunday

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.

His colourful adventures read like something out of a Boy's Own story: Humboldt explored deep into the rainforest, climbed the world's highest volcanoes and inspired princes and presidents, scientists and poets alike. Napoleon was jealous of him; Simon Bolívar's revolution was fuelled by his ideas; Darwin set sail on the Beagle because of Humboldt; and Jules Verne's Captain Nemo owned all his many books. He simply was, as one contemporary put it, 'the greatest man since the Deluge'.

Taking us on a fantastic voyage in his footsteps - racing across anthrax-infected Russia or mapping tropical rivers alive with crocodiles - Andrea Wulf shows why his life and ideas remain so important today. Humboldt predicted human-induced climate change as early as 1800, and The Invention of Nature traces his ideas as they go on to revolutionize and shape science, conservation, nature writing, politics, art and the theory of evolution. He wanted to know and understand everything and his way of thinking was so far ahead of his time that it's only coming into its own now. Alexander von Humboldt really did invent the way we see nature.

Tombstone sits less than 100 miles from the Mexico border in the middle of the picturesque Arizona desert and also squarely at the heart of America's Old West. Silver was discovered nearby in 1878, and with that strike, Tombstone was created. It soon grew to be a town of over 10,000 of the most infamous outlaws, cowboys, lawmen, prostitutes, and varmints the Wild West has ever seen. The gunfight at the O.K. Corral made Wyatt Earp and John Henry "Doc" Holliday legendary and secured Tombstone's reputation as "The Town Too Tough to Die." In this volume, more than 200 striking images and informative captions tell the stories of the heroes and villains of Tombstone, the saloons and brothels they visited, the movies they inspired, and Boot Hill, the well-known cemetery where many were buried.

Although trade connects distant people and regions, bringing cultures closer together through the exchange of material goods and ideas, it has not always led to unity and harmony. From the era of the Crusades to the dawn of colonialism, exploitation and violence characterized many trading ventures, which required vessels and convoys to overcome tremendous technological obstacles and merchants to grapple with strange customs and manners in a foreign environment. Yet despite all odds, experienced traders and licensed brokers, as well as ordinary people, travelers, pilgrims, missionaries, and interlopers across the globe, concocted ways of bartering, securing credit, and establishing relationships with people who did not speak their language, wore different garb, and worshipped other gods. Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000-1900 focuses on trade across religious boundaries around the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans during the second millennium. Written by an international team of scholars, the essays in this volume examine a wide range of commercial exchanges, from first encounters between strangers from different continents to everyday transactions between merchants who lived in the same city yet belonged to diverse groups. In order to broach the intriguing yet surprisingly neglected subject of how the relationship between trade and religion developed historically, the authors consider a number of interrelated questions: When and where was religion invoked explicitly as part of commercial policies? How did religious norms affect the everyday conduct of trade? Why did economic imperatives, political goals, and legal institutions help sustain commercial exchanges across religious barriers in different times and places? When did trade between religious groups give way to more tolerant views of "the other " and when, by contrast, did it coexist with hostile images of those decried as "infidels "? Exploring captivating examples from across the world and spanning the course of the second millennium, this groundbreaking volume sheds light on the political, economic, and juridical underpinnings of cross-cultural trade as it emerged or developed at various times and places, and reflects on the cultural and religious significance of the passage of strange persons and exotic objects across the many frontiers that separated humankind in medieval and early modern times.

The decades since the 1980s have witnessed an unprecedented surge in research about Latin American history. This much-needed volume brings together original essays by renowned scholars to provide the first comprehensive assessment of this burgeoning literature.
The seventeen original essays in The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History survey the recent historiography of the colonial era, independence movements, and postcolonial periods and span Mexico, Spanish South America, and Brazil. They begin by questioning the limitations and meaning of Latin America as a conceptual organization of space within the Americas and how the region became excluded from broader studies of the Western hemisphere. Subsequent essays address indigenous peoples of the region, rural and urban history, slavery and race, African, European and Asian immigration, labor, gender and sexuality, religion, family and childhood, economics, politics, and disease and medicine. In so doing, they bring together traditional approaches to politics and power, while examining the quotidian concerns of workers, women and children, peasants, and racial and ethnic minorities.
This volume provides the most complete state of the field and is an indispensible resource for scholars and students of Latin America.

Iranian history has long been a source of fascination for European and American observers. The country's ancient past preoccupied nineteenth-century historians and archaeologists as they attempted to construct a unified understanding of the ancient world. Iran's medieval history has likewise preoccupied scholars who have long recognized the Iranian plateau as a cultural crossroad of the world's great civilizations. In more recent times, Iran has continued to demand the attention of observers when, for example, the revolution of 1978-79 dramatically burst onto the world stage, or more recently, when the Iranian democracy movement has come to once again challenge the status quo of the clerical regime. Iran's dominance in the Middle East has brought it into conflict with the United States and so it is the subject of almost daily coverage from reporters. Sympathetic observers of Iran-students, scholars, policy makers, journalists, and the educated public-tend to be perplexed and confused by this tangled web of historical development. Iran, as it appears to most observers, is a foreboding, menacing, and far away land with a history that is simply too difficult to fathom.
The Handbook is a guide to Iran's complex history. The book emphasizes the large-scale continuities of Iranian history while also describing the important patterns of transformation that have characterized Iran's past. Each of the chapters focuses on a specific epoch of Iranian history and surveys the general political, social, cultural, and economic issues of that era. The ancient period begins with chapters considering the anthropological evidence of the prehistoric era, through to the early settled civilizations of the Iranian plateau, and continuing to the rise of the ancient Persian empires. The medieval section first considers the Arab-Muslim conquest of the seventh century, and then moves on to discuss the growing Turkish influence filtering in from Central Asia beginning in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The last third of the book covers Iran in the modern era by considering the rise of the Safavid state and its accompanying policy of centralization and the introduction of Shi'ism, followed by essays on the problems of reform and modernization in the Qajar and Pahlavi periods, and finally with a chapter on the revolution of 1978-79 and its aftermath.
The book is a collaborative exercise among scholars specializing in a variety of sub-fields, and across a number of disciplines, including history, art history, classics, literature, politics, and linguistics. Here, readers can find a reliable and accessible narrative that can serve as an introduction to the field of Iranian studies. While the number of monographs published within specialized subfields of Iranian history continues to proliferate, there have been, to date, no books that attempt to produce a comprehensive single-volume history of Iranian civilization.

The perfect study tool for students in a World History course or for any history buff s collection. A timeline covering the utmost critical points, events, figures, cultural migrations and destructions that led to the formation of the world of today. Part 1 of a series, this guide covers the earliest humans through establishing links of a globalized world."

Bestselling historian William Dalrymple reinstates India as the great intellectual and philosophical superpower of Ancient Asia, tracing the cultural flow of its religion, science and mathematics.

For most of its modern history, India was fated to be on the receiving end of cultural influence from other civilisations. But this isn’t the complete story. A full millennium earlier, India’s major cultural exports – religion, art, technology, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, language and literature – were shaping civilisations, travelling as far as Afghanistan in the West and Japan in the East.

Out of India came pioneering merchants, astronomers and astrologers, scientists and mathematicians, surgeons and sculptors, as well as holy men, monks and missionaries. In The Golden Road, legendary historian William Dalrymple highlights India’s oft­forgotten position as a crucial economic and civilisational hub at the heart of the ancient and early medieval history of Eurasia.

From Angkor to Ayutthaya, The Golden Road traces the cultural flow of Indian religions, languages, artistic and architectural forms and mathematics throughout the world. In this groundbreaking tome, Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to reinstate India as the great intellectual and philosophical superpower of ancient Asia.

a In late 2019 early 2020 word was coming out of Wuhan, China of a highly infectious virus being detected in the population, which sparked concern for what was about to become a global pandemic. Meanwhile in typically British fashion the general public started stockpiling pasta and toilet rollsa |why I have no idea! But it did prompt me to pick up my drawing pencil and sketch the first Corona cartoon of 2 dinosaurs stockpiling loo rolls while the meteorite plummeted to earth! Since that first toon I have drawn (and am still drawing) an account of a |.all the stupidity, heroics, tragedy, political and medical successes and failures, and the ludicrous nature, at times, of the human conditiona |..and a |.era |.Trump and Boris! A diary, a record, a chronicle, if you like, of what we all went through on our continuing quest to defeat the virus and get back to relative normalitya |a |with shelves full of pasta and toilet rolla |. Sometimes brutal sometimes thought provoking but, I hope, always amusing this is a book to keep and look back ona |. and perhaps to let your children and grandchildren read as one persona s view of life in the times of Covid. It was my way of keeping myself sane and as it turned out it helped many of my friends who in turn supported the daily Facebook toons. Read a The Corona Chroniclesa and think of those who surviveda |.and sadly those who didna ta |a |this book and ita s story belongs to all of us and serves as cautionary tale for the futurea